From: antispam@fricas.org   
      
   Arne Vajhøj  wrote:   
   > On 8/16/2025 6:46 PM, Waldek Hebisch wrote:   
   >> Arne Vajhøj  wrote:   
   >>> It would not make sense for Oracle to port if they expect   
   >>> customers to migrate away in a few years.   
   >>>   
   >>> And it would not make sense for customers to move to x86-64   
   >>> and migrate away in a few years.   
   >>   
   >> Why not?  Succesful platform migration may take a lot of time.   
   >> When migration is done in incremental way important part is   
   >> increasing portability of source code.  During that production   
   >> runs on existing system, in this case VMS.  Assuming that x86-64   
   >> part is succesful, that is VSI customers can easily move   
   >> software to x86-64 VMS, it make sense to use x86-64 as intermedite   
   >> step.  Namely, one has gain on hardware side, that is ability to   
   >> retire old hardware and run on new one.  And move to x86-64 can   
   >> test some aspects of migration, before it is fully done.   
   >   
   > If they were to migrate it would be lower cost to stay   
   > on Itanium and just do one migration instead of two. From   
   > VMS Itanium to VMS x86-64 may not require any code changes, but   
   > planning, project management, test etc. still make it expensive.   
   >   
   > Any incremental increase of code portability could just as   
   > well be done on Itanium. Unless support for newer C++ standards   
   > is important.   
      
   Well, I would expect that site with rational coding policy will   
   develop a test suite and regularly run automated tests.  Adding   
   VMS x86-64 to automated tests should be pretty low effort.  And   
   if tests have good coverage and all pass on VMS x86-64, then   
   they could move with resonable confidence.   
      
   Ensuring that test have good coverage is part of migration and   
   has to be done anyway, so there is no additional cost.   
      
   Of course, there are things which are hard to test in automatic   
   way.  But in many cases automated testing works fine.   
      
   Concerning benefits, beside newer C++ I would expect that getting   
   open source to run on VMS x86-64 is easier than on Itanium.   
   x86-64 supports virtualiztion.  Running on x86-64 is a milestone   
   that is visible and easy to understand.  Saying that migration   
   in 70% done may be supported by some evidence, but higher management   
   may be worried by lack of visible progress   
      
   There are other possible reasons, but I do not want to speculate too   
   much.  All I can say is that when I hear about reasons for some   
   decisions it sometimes happens than I am surprised.   
      
   --   
                                 Waldek Hebisch   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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