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From: carl@CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Why no system() under VAX C
Message-ID: <870618092740.008@CitHex.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Thu, 18-Jun-87 12:46:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: CitHex.870618092740.008
Posted: Thu Jun 18 12:46:55 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jun-87 07:14:09 EDT
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>> 1. WHY should layered products become dependant [sic] on the version of
>> VMS.  BAD.

> Layered products have varying degrees of dependence on VMS itself and in
> general have to reflect changes to the operating system.  I can understand
> why it may become necessary for them to have some dependence on VMS; the
> problem here seems to be that VMS 4.6 should have been released before C
> 2.3 and 4.6 has been held for some reason or another.  DEC is out of sync.

> It would be interesting to know, though, why language-sepecific libraries
> are being tied to VMS... it may be that library maintenance and development
> is a responsibility of the VMS team rather than, say, the C team?  Can
> anyone shed any light?

The VAXCRTL no longer qualifies as simply a "language-specific  library";  you
get VAXCRTL whether or not you buy VAXC as a layered product:  it is a part of
vanilla VMS.  As to why DEC can't just release the new VAXCRTL, independent of
the  new  VMS release, there's always the possibility that it's got changes in
it that reflect changes in VMS itself, and that  it  can't  be  reliably  used
under  VMS 4.5:  DEC does a pretty good job of keeping their software products
upward compatible, but downward compatibility's another matter  entirely.   If
the  VAXCRTL  references  another shared image (which it certainly does), then
you can't use the new C library until you have,  say,  the  new  RMS  release,
which depends on things like ACP's and XQP's, and so forth.  All you'd get for
your troubles would be an ident mismatch between libraries.