VMS vs. UNIX s/w development tools - query

[Rick Eversole]

In article <401 at bionov.UUCP>, rayl at bionov.UUCP (Ray Lillard) writes:
> I have extolled the virtues of the UNIX software 
> environment and have been told that VMS has tools which are
> equally good. (They haven't been using them and the results
> are obvious.)  What I have been shown of VMS doesn't begin
> to cover the UNIX tools set.  It seems that the concept of
> a regular expression is almost completely missing from VMS.
> 
> The question:
> 	Are tools available under VMS which are as powerful
> 	as YACC, LEX, AWK, SCCS, grep, make, etc... to name
> 	a few.


VMS has tools that can replace SCCS and make. The VMS debugger is one of the
better debuggers I've used. It is still superior the Microsoft Codeview
debugger on the PC.

MMS (module management system) is analogous to make. 
CMS (code management system) is anlogous to SCCS.

Also interesting in VMS are SCAN (a lexical analysis language {I've
never used it}) and the performance analizer (I can not remember 
real name of tool but it is a profiler)

As for YACC, LEX, GREP, and AWK you have a couple of choices :
	1) Purchase EUNICE from Wollongong and run a UNIX shell
		on your VMS system.
	2) Obtain the GNU versions of these excellent developement tools.

I used EUNICE under VMS for about 3 years. It is very close to a complete
implementation of UNIX. We've had trouble with cron, uucp, and the 
berkley series of TCP/IP commands (rsh and rlogin). yacc, lex, awk,
sed, nroff, grep, fgrep, egrep, cc and lint all work great!

You can get LINT for VMS from the Free Software Foundation (GNU) or else
from IPT (Information Processing Technologies).

IPT's LINT-PLUS is very good. It also can be purchased to check FORTRAN
(I've no experience with the Fortran version). LINT-PLUS catches everything
that UNIX LINT does plus more. LINT-PLUS has a whole lot of options to
control the things it reports on. I've used LINT-PLUS for 2 years and it
has saved me on several occassions. LINT-PLUS messages are a whole lot less
cryptic than UNIX LINT. For the first year I would use LINT-PLUS until I had
eliminated all the messages. Then I would run EUNICE's UNIX LINT (nothing
new would show up). I finally started using only LINT-PLUS.

Now, I'm in an Apollo environment and LINT-PLUS is not readily available here.
I have to use UNIX LINT..... oh well ....

VMS does not really have pipes and that can be a real pain !

It aint' cheap but EUNICE on top of VMS will give you access to the best of
both worlds. While in EUNICE you can use most VMS commands. Many can even
be put in a pipe. This little feature has been very helpful on several
occassions. Most of the pipe work I did in EUNICE tended to be a very
one-shot deal. 



----------------------------------------------------------------
Rick Eversole                  AG Communication Systems

	# No association with IPT or DEC
	# The views expressed are soley my own and not those of the
	#  company. 
	# Opposing views are welcome.

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