Everhart, Glenn From: Douglas B. Rupp [rupp@gnat.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 1999 8:19 PM To: andrewl@segsrv.hlo.dec.com; avajhoej@gtech.com; ejb@klamath.demon.co.uk; mccrobi@ibm.net; levitte@lp.se; vaxinf@CHCLU.CHEMIE.UNI-KONSTANZ.DE; GlennEverhart@FirstUSA.com; HAIK.SIMON@CERN.CH; spinler.patrick@mayo.edu; bienkiew@bph.krakow.pl; parke@bugsy.zko.dec.com; tom@kednos.com; vic@vgg.sci.uma.es Subject: Preliminary release of Gnu bash on VMS Greetings to those who expressed an interest in Gnu bash on VMS. A very preliminary release is available via anonymous ftp at 206.63.246.10. The readme is included below: These are Doug Rupp's Gnu tools for VMS 7.1. This ftp site has a slow connection. Please restrict downloads to the hours of 10:00 PM - 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time. That way it won't interfere too much with my regular job. These tools have a Unix flavour, e.g. they generally accept only Unix syntax file specifications. Most of them will work without bash. Bash requires ALPACRT06_071 or later from ftp.service.digital.com and the logical name DECC$EXEC_FILEATTR_INHERITANCE must be defined. See the ALPACRT06_071 readme for further information about this. Bash expects to be installed in /bin (sys$system) & /gnu/bin, this is what I recommend: $create/dir [.gcclib] $create/dir [.gcclib.bin] $define/job/translation=concealed gnu disk$vmsuser:[.gcclib.] $define dcl$path gnu:[bin] $define vaxc$path gnu:[bin] $copy *.exe [.gcclib.bin] ! *.exe == Gnu tools $copy bash.exe sys$system:sh.exe ! /bin/sh $set file/prot=(s:re,o:re,g:re,w:re) sys$system:sh.exe Bash is very slow on VMS because of all the processes and temporary files it creates. The temporary files are necessary because pipes don't work on VMS the same way as they do on Unix so temporary files are used instead. Because of this I create a ramdisk using DECram and define a logical name TMPDIR to point to it. This will speed up bash by 10x. TODO: Get bash working well enough to configure and build itself using gcc. For a good Unixy gcc for VMS, I recommend the Gcc that comes with the public release of GNAT (aka Gnu Ada) for VMS, available on ftp.cs.nyu.edu. You can install it and just delete the Ada related stuff, if you want. Also comes with GDB and Gnu make for VMS. Some of these Gnu tools are also included in that kit (but not bash). GNAT gets installed in the same directory hierarchy as recommended above. Also, if there's enough interest, I'll set up a mailing list. Douglas Rupp rupp@gnat.com