Let me (sort of) answer your first question by relaying some information
I found out from HP just a couple days ago.
  A customer of mine is developing an application that requires some of the
Posix Developers Kit libraries.  They had been compiling from the CI using the
CCXL command file mixing libraries located in HFS and CI filespace.  For
reasons I won't get into, this wasn't "A good thing" (TM Martha Stewart :).
I poked around, and the 'HP Officially Supported Solution' was:

.  If you compile using HP supplied Posix libraries, compile from within
   the shell, and do not use the equivalent HP supplied CI libraries.
.  If you compile using the HP supplied Posix libraries, you *MUST* execute
   your program from within the shell.  This one surprised me a bit and I
   asked this same question a couple of times to make sure I was hearing them
   correctly.

  The reasons given (and I can understand them now) were that even though some
of the functions are duplicated between the libraries, the buffer sizes used may
not be equivalent.  Therefore, if you compile using a Posix Library and
subsequently execute it under the CI, you *may* get into a situation where you
start overwriting things in memory that you didn't anticipate.
  It sounds like for the vast majority of things, this is probably not a problem,
but it potentially could be.  Therefore, in order for the application to be
in a "supportable" condition, you must keep things separate.

  To me, this reeks of the "Jeanette Nutsford Berlin Wall"condition that I
had thought was crumbling (puns intended).  I had been under the impression
up to this point that if I had a NMPRG program, I could safely execute it
either within or outside of the shell, regardless of how it was created.

Regards,
Michael L Gueterman
Easy Does It Technologies
email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.editcorp.com
voice: (888) 858-EDIT -or- (509) 943-5108
fax:   (509) 946-1170
--


-----Original Message-----
From:   Chris Swinefurth [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Wednesday, April 22, 1998 1:30 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        [HP3000-L] GCC and Posix Question

The situation:
        We do a lot of work in Cobol.  I really need access to the
sockets code, but calling it from Cobol sounds like a pain.  I have
managed to call C code compiled with GCC from Cobol.  Now, I can write a
wrapper around Berkley sockets and my beloved Cobol is network ready.

The Problem:
        I have now heard "a couple" of times that POSIX code runs slower
than MPE/iX code.  Since GCC generally runs in the POSIX shell, I assume
it creates "POSIX code".  Is there an actual difference between the
POSIX stuff and the none Posix stuff?  If there is, the object code
generated by GCC... is it POSIX or not?  The Cobol programs are
definitely MPE/iX, but they are executing GCC object code... So, does it
switch contexts depending on what it is executing?
<snip>