Chuck Ciesinski suggested I cross post this to OpenMPE since many people are
stuck on releases earlier than 7.5 for a variety of reasons.

John Burke

> The ballot description for these three items explicitly
> states that the
> new functions are to be integrated into the CI in a manner similar to
> FINFO and JINFO.  We are willing to do that; but, integrated
> into the CI
> means a patch, and though the patch will certainly target 7.5 and
> probably (maybe?) 7.0, it probably will not target 6.5.  The
> absence on
> 6.5 being to conserve R&D and MPE Support resources.
>
> Assuming most of the tactical SIB items are not backported to 6.5, do
> you still wish to see these functions integrated into the CI, or would
> it be more useful to do it another way? We could, as a group,
> define the
> many CI variable names and types (string, int, bool) which
> apply to each
> function, and then vCSY could write a program to return the desired
> piece of information via the predefined variable.  This approach does
> not require a patch and would work on 6.5 as well as the newer MPE
> releases.  But this approach implies a process create each time the
> function is invoked, thus, could not be used in break mode, and it is
> less "natural" to invoke.
>

How about a compromise? Instead of only implementing the CI user functions
item
from the 2003 SIB on 7.5, and maybe 7.0, implement it on 6.5 - 7.5 and then
implement the three new "CI functions", SPOOLINFO, DEVINFO, and VOLINFO, as
programs. The new CI user function interface could be used, with appropriate
command file wrapper, to implement SPOOLINFO, DEVINFO and VOLINFO "in line".

John Burke