In article <1993Jul9.113838.29554 at comp.bioz.unibas.ch>, doelz at comp.bioz.unibas.ch (Reinhard Doelz) writes:
> I would like to know who would be interested to discuss POSIX on VMS -
> with respect to program usage and maintenance. I need experience
> reports on stability and versatility for biologists, etc.
> Would it make sense to make a software distribution in POSIX also, i.e.
> is it used well enough in biologist's machines to try the effort?
Thanks to all who replied so far. I received some questions on what POSIX is.
POSIX is the attempt to unify software and interfaces to operating systems.
Most of the proprietary systems try to become 'POSIX compliant' which means
that all pieces of software with this label are expected to be (source)
code compatible and run without modifications. The User interface of POSIX
looks pretty much like UNIX. If you invoke POSIX on VMS you basically start
a UNIX emulator (forgive me if this is a rather blunt interpretation).
My specific question relates to the fact that we are currently developing
a software package and will put this into beta mid-august. The programs are
expected to deal with database update integration, i.e. you will be able
to integrate an EMBL update into your existing database (eventually, an
update database) in GCG or generic database format without the need to run
a concatenation or other sort of purge/delete/replace action.
As the software can basically run on all systems which currently support
the GCG software, I considered to have the driving scripts written in shell
or DCL commands. If all of you run POSIX on VMS, I would just distribute
the POSIX version. Code maintenance is much easier if the generic specialities
are not to be considered.
I received a few replies which indicates attempts to run GCG under POSIX on
VMS. Is this going to be a serious alternative?
> --
> +----------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
> | Dr. Reinhard Doelz | RFC doelz at urz.unibas.ch |
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