Re: PostgreSql and VMS operating System

On 2025-01-25 08:09, Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
>> On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 01:07:56AM -0800, Christophe Pettus wrote:
>>> So, basically, if you want a maintained VMS port, you need to either
>>> drive the project yourself, or find others who will.
>
>> This email thread from 2003 says VMS probably doesn't work anymore
>> because of lack of testers:
>> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/200301071531.h07FVWI08147%40candle.pha.pa.us#0dbc1439f51ec7842125fb8ae200b6da
>
> I doubt we ever had a working VMS port. There are precisely zero
> references to VMS in our commit log, so certainly there was never one
> that got removed. It's barely possible that PG "just worked" without
> any patches under their POSIX emulation layer, but I could not find
> any indication of successful users of PG-on-VMS in the mail list
> archives either.

As a data point, when the recent incarnation of VMS Software announced
their intention to allow Community sign ups a few years ago, I went
and created an account on their system to investigate. VAX VMX being
one of the first multi-user systems I learned back in the day, before
learning *nix. ;)

Anyway, it went... poorly. Their system is so crap that users can only
have a very specific set of "special" characters allowedin user
passwords:

$#(at)!%*&

Any other symbols are accepted at password setting time, but actually
cause the user login to fail.

When I attempted to file a bug about this problem, they literally told
me it's not a bug and it working as intended.

So frankly, VMS Software are so completely clueless that I strongly
recommend no-one waste their time and effort on them.

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift