Jeff Kell writes:
>
> First off, let me add another pat on the back for Mark Bixby's excellent
> and wide-ranging porting efforts with Apache, Syslog, and Bind.  You can
> achieve excellent results when you find the rare individual who is
> well-versed in each of Unix, MPE, and the elusive MPE Posix environment.
> Many long-time MPE fanatics (myself included) lack the patience to
> follow through porting efforts due to Unix mysteries.  Likewise, many
> long-time Unix gurus have abandoned MPE porting efforts due to Posix
> mysteries.  Those few individuals who manage to bridge the gap make
> miracles happen.

I came.  I saw a great need.  I ported.  ;-)

Porting isn't necessarily as hard as you might think.  Major Internet packages
like Samba and Apache and BIND have already been designed to be portable
between about 10 different Unix platforms, with plenty of #ifdefs and #defines
already built in to account for platform idiosyncracies.  Odds are good that
the features of MPE POSIX are the same as some of those 10 other Unix
platforms.  The code MPE needs has already been written; you just need to
turn it on with a magic #define.

You don't even need extensive C experience.  Excluding some trivial test
programs to debug porting issues, I've only written one C program from scratch
in my entire life.  My C/Unix/POSIX knowledge has been acquired via osmosis
from installing and using a long list of Internet freeware (http://www.cccd.edu/
dis/freeware.html).  My Unix programming work is pretty much all done in sh
or Perl.

Porting strategy pretty much goes like this:

1) Be familiar with the package you're trying to port, both from an installer
and end-user perspective.

2) Debug any "Configure" script problems.

3) Fix compile-time problems.

4) Deal with unresolved external functions by either turning off that function-
ality or writing substitute functions.

5) Deal with run-time issues.  This is the fun one, where you run into the
rough edges of POSIX, both documented and undocumented.

Somewhere on my list of good intentions is to go through all the source I've
ported and summarize the "#ifdef MPE" portions into an MPE Porting Tips & Tricks
document.  Hopefully before HP World, which I'll actually be attending this
year.

> Let's not forget yet another "Mark" of excellence... Mark Klein.  It is
> his Gnu/gcc port that made much of this possible.  His efforts made many
> porting efforts "tolerable" by providing a much more robust Posix middle
> ground.

Indeed.  Were it not for his port of gcc, I would not be doing my ports,
since the cost of HP C/iX on a 969/200 would be far too prohibitive for my
employer.

He provided assistance in getting me started back in January, and is readily
available to resolve gcc problems, even today (Memorial Day) via home phone on
a holiday.

And gcc must have been a hard port to do.  My stuff just has to worry about
conforming to POSIX; the other Mark has to take a Unix program and teach it
about PA-RISC and MPE internals like NMOBJ formats, etc.

> And of course let's not forget Lars for Samba, Michael Hensley for the
> freeware packaging, Mike Yawn for Java, and others [I couldn't begin to
> name them all] who have done so much with so little for our benefit.

I'd like to also thank Jeff Vance and CSY for invaluable assistance
in several areas that have allowed me to do the BIND/iX work in such a
speedy manner.

I also must thank all of the HPRC engineers that have put up with a personal
record-breaking number of calls and SRs and ERs from me since I started my
porting work.  ;-)

Last but certainly not least, we should all thank those nameless HP programmers
who toiled to bring us POSIX itself.  We porters may gripe about the various
rough edges, but as a whole POSIX was a big job that provides major new
development potential for the platform.  After several years of relative
obscurity, POSIX finally is being used (though I have to admit, seeing Unix
syslog data scrolling across my MPE console is really really weird ;-)).

> The 3000 has become quite a mature Internet player due to volunteer efforts
> for the most part (though CSY has contributed as well, thank you very
> much!) while other areas remain stagnant.

Ask not what MPE can do for you, but instead what you can do for MPE.....
--
Mark Bixby                      E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Coast Community College Dist.   Web: http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/
District Information Services   1370 Adams Ave, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-5429
Technical Support               +1 714 438-4647
"You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish." - tunefs(1M)