[FreeVMS] Is this on the FreeVMS roadmap?

[Rebecca Putman]

Trust me; we've seen it.  Three times now.

Rebecca

On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 10:34 -0500, Graham Toal wrote:
> Hi guys - I just dropped in to float an idea or at least see if it is
> something that the FreeVMS team are already looking at...
> 
> One of my interests is in static binary translation - it started out
> for me as a way of writing really fast video game emulations,
> but it developed into something bigger and I'm interested now
> in preserving legacy software as well; also restricting binary
> translation to programs originally written in high level languages
> does simplify some of the problems of translation that you would
> otherwise get with hand-coded assembly programs.
> 
> I know that DEC wrote a binary translator for Vax -> Alpha
> code, but as far as I know, that's the only one ever done for
> Vax code.  I was wondering if y'all were considering a binary
> translator for Vax code to generate binaries that would run
> on FreeVMS?
> 
> Since you have the command line interpreter/program loader
> under your control, you could easily intercept commands to
> detect Vax binaries and hand them off to some other module
> which would run them under some sort of emulation.
> 
> Because FreeVMS would be system call compatible with
> OpenVMS, this ought to be a relatively easy hack...  start with
> a Vax emulator core such as that from "simh" (tried and proven)
> and intercept any calls out of the emulated binary so that
> you call library routines in native mode.
> 
> Once a basic traditional emulator is working, you can then
> either:
> 
> 1) do dynamic binary translation (aka recompilation) on the fly
> 
> or
> 
> 2) checksum the binary as you load it, and if it is a
> recognised program (ie one that you have previously
> translated into native code) throw it out of memory and
> run the translated version instead.
> 
> A scheme like this would allow you to run old compiled third-party
> Vax/VMS apps without requiring a VMS licence.  It might also be
> helpful during FreeVMS development by allowing you to run a
> complete system, replacing Vax executables with native ones
> as you port more and more of the system.
> 
> For good measure, you could do the same scheme with
> Alpha code.   Probably easier if anything.
> 
> I'm not volunteering to write a binary translator (at this time) but
> I might be interested some time in the future.  Anyway, for
> the first iteration, you need someone with VMS linker/loader
> expertise, and a copy of simh, not someone with static binary
> translation experience.  If you guys ever get that working, I'm
> up for the next stage...
> 
> regards,
> 
> 
> Graham Toal
> PS this is a repost, as I didn't see it turn up in my mail or in the
> archives the first time I tried to submit to the mailing list.
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