The GNV team is pleased to announce that BASH 4.2.45 is now available for OpenVMS at the GNV site.
Thanks to extensive work by Eric Robertson and feedback from testers of the previous Bash 4.2.39 port, this is the most accurate and functional port of Bash to VMS yet.
You can find PCSI kits for this port at:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnv/files/bash
or
ftp://encompasserve.org/gnv/ in the axp0830, axp0840, i640840
or vax0730 directories.
If the HP GNV kit is installed, make sure that the [vms$common.gnv.bin] directory exists. If it does not, it means that you have not run the mandatory GNV startup file and the installation will not work properly.
If you have installed one of the pre-announcement release candidate kits, you need to uninstall it before installing this kit.
The files are in ZIP archives. Use the commonly available UNZIP utility to unzip them.
Copies of unzip are at ftp://ftp.encompasserve.org/
Please read the release notes for more detailed information about the post installation procedure.
If you install to a different disk than the system disk, the release notes will be in the [vms$common.syshlp] on that disk. The gnv$bash_startup.com file will also be in the [vms$common.sys$startup] directory of that disk.
This port of Bash uses a special build procedure of running patch scripts to update the original source which allows us to more easily keep the port at the latest official patch level.
There still is still a lot more work that can be done on this port.
1. Getting the port to build against the GNU BASH 4.3 daily tarballs. GNU Bash 4.3 will be the next release of bash at some point in the future. If we can get the port to work against the Bash 4.3 daily tarballs, we may be able to get the VMS specific changes into the GNU source kit.
2. Test the untested dynamically loaded built-in feature. This feature should be a big win on VMS as it will avoid some process spawning.
3. Look at implementing some of the unimplemented features such as JOB CONTROL and COPROCSSING. JOB control can be simulated SYS$ENQ and blocking ASTs for cooperating programs. The main challenge in the implementation of JOB CONTROL to only use it on programs that support it.
Porting code to VMS helps with learning both the Linux programming API and the VMS API, which are both valuable job skills for the present and future.
Participating in a forum for building and testing daily or pre-release code for an open source project also expands your professional network.
malmberg August 04 2022 No more VAX hobbyist licenses. Community licenses for Alpha/IA64/X86_64 VMS Software Inc. Commercial VMS software licenses for VAX available from HPE.
ozboomer July 20 2022 Just re-visiting.. No more hobbyist licenses? Is that from vmssoftware.com, no 'community' licenses?
valdirfranco July 01 2022 No more hobbyist license...sad
mister_wavey February 12 2022 I recall that the disks failed on the public access VMS systems that included Fafner
parwezw January 03 2022 Anyone know what happened to FAFNER.DYNDS.ORG? I had a hobbyist account here but can longer access the site.
gtackett October 27 2021 Make that DECdfs _2.1A_ for Vax
gtackett October 27 2021 I'm looking for DECdfs V2.4A kit for VAX. Asking here just in case anyone is still listening.
MarkRLV September 17 2021 At one time, didn't this web site have a job board? I would love to use my legacy skills one last time in my career.
malmberg January 18 2021 New Hobbyist PAKs for VAX/VMS are no longer available according to reports. Only commercial licenses are reported to be for sale from HPE
dfilip January 16 2021 Can someone please point me to hobbyist license pak? I'm looking for VAX/VMS 7.1, DECnet Phase IV, and UCX/TCPIP ... have the 7.1 media, need the license paks ... thanks!
