Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!silver!gilbertd
From: gilbertd@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Don Gilbert)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.wanted
Subject: Re: ARC for VMS
Message-ID: <27307@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 7 Oct 89 14:08:14 GMT
References: <33121@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Reply-To: gilbertd@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Don Gilbert)
Distribution: na
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Lines: 32

There are two versions of Arc for VMS that I found; neither is
completely statisfactory to me.  The generally available version
can be ftp'ed from the simtel archives:  ftp stimtel-20.arpa
It is in the cd PD3:<MISC.vaxvms>  directory there as
ARCVMS.UUE.1, a uuencoded executable only.  You may also want to
pick up UUDECODE.VMS.2 from that directory to decode the file.
This version is based on an earlier release of Arc and does not
handle the popular "Squash" method from PKArc.  I have not been
able to get my hands on the source to this, though the porting
author is listed, so you can try.
   The second version is mainly just a slight modification of the
up-to-date Unix version, and includes squashing and source -- if
you get your hands on the unix source you can probably recompile
with Vax C with minor changes.  The problem with this version is that
it needs a companion program, which I have seen only as executable,
that converts from some weird VMS record blocking in arc files to
a stream of bytes that normal c/unix file handling routines can
read.  I don't know enough about VMS file structure to know what
is going on, except that this version of Arc for VMS is unacceptable
for my purposes.
   You can find the Unix arc source in two places:
  ftp  terminator.cc.umich.edu, cd unix, binary get arcsrc.tar.Z
  ftp  iuvax.cs.indiana.edu, cd pub/arc, binary get arc.tar.Z
The terminator version has a lot more documentation, patch info,
etc.  
     If anyone comes up with an up-to-date version of Arc for VMS
which handles squashing and the vms file record problem, please
let me know.   Even the source for the old version in Simtel
archives, as I can patch in the squash routines.

-- Don
gilbertd@iubio.bio.indiana.edu