[openssl-dev] 1.1.0 Build requirement for OpenVMS

[Richard Levitte]

In message <17A8F299EFD84F899C35E7D0DF885A3A at Unimatrix1> on Wed, 18 May 2016 23:25:12 -0400, "Michael Steve" <msteve at columbus.rr.com> said:

msteve> I want to better understand the rationale behind requiring MMS and
msteve> Perl for the 1.1.0 builds by the VMS community. If multiple “someones”
msteve> from this community can explain this to me, it would be most
msteve> appreciated.

Sure.  The rationale is first of all to have a common build database
and set of scripts (as much as possible) for all platforms we support.
In previous OpenSSL version, we have one set of scripts and a Makefile
for Unix, one set of scripts and completely different makefile for
Windows, and a sub-functional set of DCL scripts for VMS (1).  This
was a mess to maintain.

Perl was chosen as a script language because it's one of the, not to
say *the*, most well supported interpreters on all our target
platforms (including VMS).

MMS was chosen because it is a well supported make implementation on
VMS.  However, if MMS isn't accessible for you, MMK is a free fully
functional replacement.

Cheers,
Richard

(1) and for the VMS case, it felt like the DCL scripts were constantly
    lagging behind, and with all the changes happening in the 1.1.0
    development, it became too much of a burden.  For a while there, I
    was seriously considering giving up VMS support entirely.

-- 
Richard Levitte         levitte at openssl.org
OpenSSL Project         http://www.openssl.org/~levitte/