Re: PostgreSql and VMS operating System

> On Jan 24, 2025, at 08:09, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> Our normal development flow is:
>
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Todo#Development_Process
> Desirability -> Design -> Implement -> Test -> Review -> Commit
>
> so I would focus on Desirability at this point. The next question is
> whether the demand justifies the code changes.

To expand on this just a bit, you do not need anyone's permission to just take the existing PostgreSQL code base and get it running on VMS. PostgreSQL is much more truly open-source than a lot of "open source" projects. However, what you then have is a fork, rather than the mainline PostgreSQL codebase. Since it is extremely unlikely that you can just compile the current code on VMS and have it work, some patches will be required to do conditional compilation and provide support code for VMS, and perhaps some additions to and modifications of the documentation and test suite.

The part where you need to negotiate with the community is whether or not to accept those changes back into the mainline. To be extreme, if the difference is one small conditionally-compiled primitive and the code otherwise runs just as it did before (including performance) on the currently-supported platforms, the chance is pretty good; if there is extensive surgery that requires a lot of changes, or if those changes have performance or maintenance impact on the mainline, the chance is much lower.
--
Christophe Pettus / christophe(dot)pettus(at)pgexperts(dot)com
Chief Executive Officer / PGX Inc. / 24x7 Support, Consulting, Development / pgexperts.com
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