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OpenVMS OpenOffice.org port

Updated 2009-05-07, by Martin Borgman

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News

12-apr-2009:
A new version of DIX (7.1) is now available. DIX has become more and more DCL-like. A lot of DCL lexical functions now work in DIX, so you can execute more and more dcl scripts. Since DIX now also has a builtin debugger, you can debug dcl-scripts (at least as long as DIX understands them). In total some 50 changes have been made. See the release notes for this version on the dix webpage.
8 december 2008:
The presentation "Overview Kerberos, ACME and LDAP in an OpenVMS-environment" Ton held 20 november 2008 at the HPdutchworld 2008/Interex 2008 conference is now online. This presentation is in Dutch. On request I will make an English translation available.

The presentation in ODF format, The presentation in PDF format.

The text of the notes of the presentation in ODF format, The text of the notes of the presentation in PDF format.

The ODF format can be read using OpenOffice.org.

17-jun-2008:
A new version of DIX (7.0) is now available. The main new feature is the concept of a view. This is the possibility to combine data from multiple records in multiple files as one record. You can then search / display / modify this (combined) record. Also the interactive mode now contains a very good interpretor with a lot of things you always wanted in DCL (reals, tables and much much more). See the release notes for this version on the dix webpage.
A new utility has been added: ACX. This is an enhanced accounting utility that supports wildcard selection, SMG interface, multiple lists and much more. See the info in acx webpage.
A new utility has been added: Analyze_rms. This is a decwindows variant of analyze/rms, with a lot of explaining how RMS indexed files are organized. See the info in the analyze_rms webpage.
28 nov 2006:
A new version of dix (6.0) is available. The main new feature of this version is a DecWindows interface. Dix now also has an option to analyze RMS Indexed files with a lot of detail. Very nice to learn to understand how RMS indexed files are organized. See the release notes for this version on the dix webpage.
13 october 2006:
The Presentation Ton held 11 october 2006 at the HPdutchworld 2006/Interex 2006 conference is now online.

The presentation in ODF format, The presentation in PDF format.

The ODF format can be read using OpenOffice.org 2. Using Openoffice.org means that you can see the notes attached to some sheets.

30 august 2006:
I made some changes to the perl enabler page using perl under bash. It now works on OpenVMS 8.3 with GNV 2.1-0 and Perl 5.8-6.
1 february 2006:
After perl and java Martin also worked out a way to use python under bash. We need this features for the OpenOffice port to OpenVMS.

A description how to use python can be found in the gnv section using python under bash.
30 january 2006:
Martin worked out a way to use perl and java under bash. We need this features for the OpenOffice port to OpenVMS.

A description how to use perl can be found in the gnv section using perl under bash.

A description how to use java can be found in the gnv section using java under bash.

Recent News...

Porting OpenOffice to OpenVMS

Project Goals

The main goal of the project is to port a recent version of OpenOffice to OpenVMS Alpha and ia64. To achieve this goal we decided to use the features first introduced in the OpenVMS versions for the DII COE project. This means the new features introduced in the CRTL (improved "standards" compatibility and UNIX style file paths) and the unix commands and utilities provided by the GNV kit. As a result, OpenOffice will only become available on OpenVMS versions supporting these new features.

Secondary Goals

We participate in field tests and provide as much feedback as we can on the new features in the CRTL and the GNV kit.

We will improve, add new features to some GNV tools and add new tools when needed.

We help others to add ODS-5 and UNIX style file path support to their ported applications.

We write how-to documents on how to port open source software to OpenVMS.

Status of the project

Porting OpenOffice is really hard, and not only because of the sheer amount of source files (100,000+). Even getting OpenOffice compiled on Solaris 9 took some serious effort! The hardest part is that you see so little progress on the outside. When you finally see the OpenOffice.org logo, you're 99.9% done.

Our first problem was getting the sources on an OpenVMS ODS-5 disk with all the filenames intact. There is, as far as we know, no tool, supporting ODS-5 filenames, to get source files from a CVS server so we downloaded a tar.gz file.

GNV gzip did not handle ODS-5 names properly, but that was a minor problem (a file named xxx^.tar.gz;1 would become xxx^.tar.;1 after gunzipping). We fixed this and our version of gzip is now part of the latest GNV kit.

GNV tar could not untar the OpenOffice tar file. We are porting POSIX.2 PAX to OpenVMS. With PAX you can read and write tar and cpio files. We use PAX to untar the OpenOffice sources. We will submit our version of PAX for a future release of the GNV kit.

We have a port of m4, a UNIX macro language interpreter, used by many open source build tools like automake, autoconf and libtool.

We are writing a document on how to port open source software to OpenVMS. Hopefully more people will participate in the writing of this document.

But this was just to get us started.

What part of OpenOffice did we really port:

  • We have a working version of dmake, the primary OpenOffice build tool, but we need to do some of this work again because of all the changes in OpenOffice 2.0 and OpenVMS 8.3.

What still needs to be done

Although we only have two people doing some programming work in their spare time, we have achieved quite a lot, but we have unfortunately very little to show for it. Partially this is because of the strange OpenOffice build environment. It is somewhat strange for UNIX people but completely strange for us OpenVMS people.

And then there are the new CRTL features and the feature switches. This took a while to understand.

And don't forget that, in the beginning, many of the GNV tools didn't quite work the way they should.

We still need:

  • An ODS-5 extended filename aware CVS client with UNIX style file path support, And preferably also a CVS server with these features.
  • Tools like automake, autoconf and libtool.
  • All the GNV tools still need to be tested for ODS-5 extended filename and UNIX style file path support. Tools like zip and bzip2 still need some work.
  • A tcsh shell. Hunter Goatley ported tcsh to OpenVMS using POSIX for OpenVMS a very long time ago, so, as far as we know, no ODS-5 extended filename support.
  • All the standard tools that are missing from the GNV kit and/or have an outdated version in the GNV kit.
  • Although the DEC compilers are most probably the best compilers on the market, a OpenVMS port of gcc 3.2.2 or better with ODS-5 extended filename and UNIX style file path support would really help our project.
  • More standard compliant functions in the CRTL, we desperately need fork and a proper working version of vfork and while we don't have those, we need good workarounds.
  • An Alpha? as Tinderbox-system http://www.mozilla.org/tinderbox.html
  • But most of all PEOPLE. Primary contact-address:mailto:info@oooovms.dyndns.org

We need you!

Our group currently consists of:

  • two programmers
  • one system manager
  • one ambassador
  • about three others who sometimes help out

We could do more with some helpful hands in basically any department.

And don't forget, this is what we do in our spare time.

Links

Contacts

Us at the third OpenOffice.org conference

Us at the third OpenOffice.org conference

Our build environment (updated 24 june 2008)

Our current build environment consists of the following:

  • One Alpha 1000A 5/400 system with 1024 MB of memory and a KZPCM-DA Dual SCSI card
  • OpenVMS 8.3
  • TCP/IP 5.6-9 ECO 2
  • JAVA 1.5-3 from the Java™ technology on hp Alpha systems for the Java™ Platform page
  • GNV 2.1-1
  • GTK V1.2-10
  • OPL V1.0-0A9
  • MYSQL V4.1-14
  • OPENSSL097E V1.2-0
  • CGATEPRO V5.1-4
  • C 7.3-009
  • C++ 7.3-009
  • HP Fortran V8.0-1-104669-48GBT
  • DECset 12.4 (not a requirement, but some of our programmers love LSE. They also love vi, weird!)
  • Perl 5.8-6 from OpenVMS secure web server (based on apache) page
  • Compaq Secure Web Server (Apache) V1.3-1
  • Compaq Secure Web Server PERL (mod_perl) V1.1
  • Compaq Secure Web Server PHP (mod_php) V1.2-1
  • An Itanium box running OpenVMS 8.3 for the ia64 port.

I don't think that we need the OpenVMS porting tools because the CRTL makes them obsolete.

Featured on this site:

Links on this site
Link Description
Reference Reference section (2006-12-24)
GNV GNV section (2006-12-24)
TCSH placed on to do list (2003-06-02)
dmake Update dmake page (2006-09-28)
pax 2.1 PAX is the POSIX.2 Portable Archive eXchange utility. With PAX you can read and write tar and cpio formatted archives (2003-09-21)
issuelist General OpenVMS porting issuelist (2006-12-24)
fshelp Freeware utility to view and search OpenVMS help files (2008-12-29)
dix Freeware utility to view, search and modify OpenVMS indexed files (2009-05-06)
regedit Freeware utility to edit the OpenVMS registry (2008-12-29)
acx Enhanced accounting utility(2008-12-29)
analyze_rms Decwindows variant of analyze/rms (2008-12-29)
mymail A program to use vms mail syntax in a communigate-pro environment (2008-12-29)
auto A program to AUTOmatically expand DCL commands (2008-12-29)

Maintained by the OpenOffice on OpenVMS porting Project.