Re: OpenVMS?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-hackers-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org [mailto:pgsql-hackers-
> owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of Rayson Ho
> Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 9:39 AM
> To: David Fetter
> Cc: Andrew Dunstan; PG Hackers
> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] OpenVMS?
>
> On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 11:22 AM, David Fetter wrote:
> >    * Shell access from several accounts
> >    * Git or cvs client
> >    * Compiler tools
> >    * Perl of a fairly recent vintage
> >    * Outbound http access
>
> I had access to the HP testdrive before they closed it down (the Unix
> servers were down in Sept 08, but the VMS cluster was running till Jan
> 2010). They blocked all outbound internet access to the testdrive
> servers -- only telnet and ftp were allowed.
>
> Count me in for the OpenVMS porting effort (but I guess I will apply
> for an account seperately as I might port other things to OpenVMS in
> the future). I believe the porting effort is larger than a new Unix
> port but smaller than the Windows port, as most of the Unix and POSIX
> functions and system calls are supported on OpenVMS.
>
> MySQL has around 10 functions changed or written specifically for
> OpenVMS, most of those are related to utime(), $UMASK & $UMASKDIR,
> open(), and Unix pathnames. (I think utime() support was added a few
> years ago to OpenVMS 7.3 & 8.0 -- so may be the code was added to
> MySQL for earlier VMS versions.)
>
> PostgreSQL uses fork(), which is not supported on OpenVMS. However,
> the techniques used by the WIN32 version of internal_forkexec() in
> src/backend/postmaster/postmaster.c give the VMS version a good
> starting point.

For PostgreSQL, you will probably want to use LIB$SPAWN() as a rough equivalent to CreateProcess() on Windows
http://www.sysworks.com.au/disk$vaxdocsep002/opsys/vmsos721/5932/5932pro_041.html

> Lastly, are we going to support ODS-2 disks?? And are we going to
> require GNV installed for building and running PostgreSQL on OpenVMS??