[FreeVMS] New release 0.2.9

[Roar Thronæs]

On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 10:22:14AM -0600, Gregory Nutt wrote:
> 
> I have been a lurker on this list for sometime.  I have good OS
> development experience as well as (ancient) VMS experience.  I would

At kernel or application level?

> like to participate in the FreeVMS development and I had hoped that
> by listening on the list for a while, I would learn where to begin and
> would not have to ask all of the dumb, embarrassing questions.  But now,
> I still don't have a clue where/how to get started.

> 1. Get a development PC.  What hardware is supported?  Can I buy
>    a cheap, used PC for this?

Rather use an emulated PC (bochs or qemu), since it is easier to debug.
An ordinary PC should be used once in a while, since the emulators are
not quite 100% natural. (I got some IDE interrupt problems when
I used a real x86_64, but none with bochs and qemu.)
(But of course you will need a real PC to compile and emulate on.)

Supported hardware is listed in FEATURES.

> 2. Download FreeVMS.  Hmm.. I look at the FTP list and I am confused.
>    What needs to be downloaded?  It seems that there are a number of
>    pieces, some that are needed and some not.
>
> 3. Install FreeVMS.  How?

See linux/HOWTO (for both 2. and 3.).

(Both FEATURES and HOWTO are mentioned in the README file.
That file gives you a lot of other files to read, too.
Maybe the web pages should say something about reading the README file.)

> Then if I want to help with the development there are a other
> questions about what development environment I need and how I would
> submit changes, etc.

Changes are mostly submitted to me by email.

> Perhaps we could develop a FAQ?  Perhaps if I/we try this and
> document our experiences, we can reduce this learning curve.  I
> suspect that the difficulty in learning to work with FreeVMS is
> obstacle for other potential contributors as well.

The learning curve for developing is long and steep, since at the main level
you will be having in mind up to 4 CPUs (i386, x86_64, VAX, ALPHA), the
VMS OS and internals, the Linux OS and kernel and FreeVMS itself (which is
currently a mixture on both application and kernel level).
It is also possible to develop without doing anything with the kernel;
init and librtl have been developed and tested on pure Linux or VMS.

-- 
Regards,
Roar Thronæs