For the last few days, I've been trying to build perl 5.8.4 on VAX/VMS 6.2 (stop laughing). I just found Simh, a program that can simulator several machine architectures including a VAX 3900. I have VMS and Compaq C installed on it and tried to build perl. I've run into a few problems that I don't remember having when I built 5.8.0 about a year ago on a real VAX.
First, ext/IO/IO.xs attempts to do an ioctl(SIOCATMARK). VMS (at least on 6.2) doesn't support ioctl() but the same functionality can be achieved using a system service call. I wrote a routine to call the system service and plugged it in. If I can determine that it works properly, I'll submit it as a patch.
Second, Time::HiRes failed to build due to lack of support for several functions including gettimeofday(). These routines are not supported on VMS 6.2. The Time::HiRes tests still attempted to run and failed after I reconfigured without including Time::HiRes in the build.
Third, several tests are failing. t/op/pack.t appears to be failing with a floating point overflow. Several BigInt tests also failed although I haven't yet looked into the reasons.
Is anyone else still using perl on VMS 6.2? Does anyone know if the latset versions of perl should still be buildable on this platform?
I'll be resuming testing tomorrow on a real VAX at the office to see if I run into the same issues.
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