OpenVMS OpenOffice.org port

Updated 2024-11-13, by Martin Borgman

vms shark large

News

13-nov-2024
A new version of DIX (9.0) has been released.
The new features can be found in the release_notes file on the dix webpage.
The biggest change is the support for the x86 architecture.
19-aug-2016
A new version of DIX (8.6) has been released.
The new features can be found in the release_notes file on the dix webpage.
The biggest change is the support for sha and md5 hash functions.
25-feb-2016
A new version of DIX (8.5) has been released.
The new features can be found in the release_notes file on the dix webpage.
This version adds support for VSI VMS 8.4-1 and 8.4-2.
16-jun-2014
A new version of DIX (8.4) has been released.
The new features can be found in the release_notes file on the dix webpage.
Some enhancements are:
  1. Support for complex numbers
  2. Added some scripts to the examples
  3. Added a CONVERT command
  4. Added a LIBRARY command
22-sep-2013
A new version of DIX (8.3) has been released.
The new features can be found in the release notes file.
Some enhancements are:
  • Directory has been enhanced
    directory/fast : Like dfu.
    direct/select=ace=id=username[/fast] : Select files that have specific aces
    direct/sel=lbn=(lbn1,lbn2) : Select files that are mapped on lbn1-lbn2
  • Structured symbols
  • Allow modules in libraries to be typed/searched/directoried as in library(module)
  • Allow status codes to be searched in message files : f$message(code,,"filemask")
Also the help file of DIX is now avalible from the web site, click on DIX_HELP for the information.

See the release notes for this version on the dix webpage.
31-okt-2012
A new version of DIX (8.2) has been released.
Some enhancements are:
  • Plotting of pie charts DIX/PLOT/PIE value
  • Show process/continuous
Also the help file of DIX is now avalible from the web site, click on DIX_HELP for the information.

See the release notes for this version on the dix webpage.
22-mar-2012
A new version of DIX (version 8.1) has been released.
It contains a lot of enhancements (see the release notes) and of course some bugfixing.
As always I am very interested in suggestions/questions/error reports via dixdev@oooovms.dyndns.org
See the release notes for this version on the dix webpage.

Recent News...

Porting OpenOffice to OpenVMS

Project Goals

The main goal of the project is to port a recent version of OpenOffice to OpenVMS Alpha and ia64. To achieve this goal we decided to use the features first introduced in the OpenVMS versions for the DII COE project. This means the new features introduced in the CRTL (improved "standards" compatibility and UNIX style file paths) and the unix commands and utilities provided by the GNV kit. As a result, OpenOffice will only become available on OpenVMS versions supporting these new features.

Secondary Goals

We participate in field tests and provide as much feedback as we can on the new features in the CRTL and the GNV kit.

We will improve, add new features to some GNV tools and add new tools when needed.

We help others to add ODS-5 and UNIX style file path support to their ported applications.

We write how-to documents on how to port open source software to OpenVMS.

Status of the project

Porting OpenOffice is really hard, and not only because of the sheer amount of source files (100,000+). Even getting OpenOffice compiled on Solaris 9 took some serious effort! The hardest part is that you see so little progress on the outside. When you finally see the OpenOffice.org logo, you're 99.9% done.

Our first problem was getting the sources on an OpenVMS ODS-5 disk with all the filenames intact. There is, as far as we know, no tool, supporting ODS-5 filenames, to get source files from a CVS server so we downloaded a tar.gz file.

GNV gzip did not handle ODS-5 names properly, but that was a minor problem (a file named xxx^.tar.gz;1 would become xxx^.tar.;1 after gunzipping). We fixed this and our version of gzip is now part of the latest GNV kit.

GNV tar could not untar the OpenOffice tar file. We are porting POSIX.2 PAX to OpenVMS. With PAX you can read and write tar and cpio files. We use PAX to untar the OpenOffice sources. We will submit our version of PAX for a future release of the GNV kit.

We have a port of m4, a UNIX macro language interpreter, used by many open source build tools like automake, autoconf and libtool.

We are writing a document on how to port open source software to OpenVMS. Hopefully more people will participate in the writing of this document.

But this was just to get us started.

What part of OpenOffice did we really port:

What still needs to be done

Although we only have two people doing some programming work in their spare time, we have achieved quite a lot, but we have unfortunately very little to show for it. Partially this is because of the strange OpenOffice build environment. It is somewhat strange for UNIX people but completely strange for us OpenVMS people.

And then there are the new CRTL features and the feature switches. This took a while to understand.

And don't forget that, in the beginning, many of the GNV tools didn't quite work the way they should.

We still need:

We need you!

Our group currently consists of:

We could do more with some helpful hands in basically any department.

And don't forget, this is what we do in our spare time.

Links

Contacts

Us at the third OpenOffice.org conference

Us at the third OpenOffice.org conference

Our build environment (updated 24 june 2008)

Our current build environment consists of the following:

I don't think that we need the OpenVMS porting tools because the CRTL makes them obsolete.

Featured on this site:

Link Description
Reference Reference section (2021-03-20)
GNV GNV section (2021-03-20)
TCSH placed on to do list (2021-03-20)
dmake Update dmake page (2021-03-20)
pax 2.1 PAX is the POSIX.2 Portable Archive eXchange utility. With PAX you can read and write tar and cpio formatted archives (2021-03-20)
issuelist General OpenVMS porting issuelist (2021-03-20)
fshelp Freeware utility to view and search OpenVMS help files (2021-03-20)
dix Freeware utility to view, search and modify OpenVMS indexed files (2024-11-08)
regedit Freeware utility to edit the OpenVMS registry (2021-03-20)
acx Enhanced accounting utility(2021-03-20)
analyze_rms Decwindows variant of analyze/rms (2021-03-20)
mymail A program to use vms mail syntax in a communigate-pro environment (2021-03-20)
auto A program to AUTOmatically expand DCL commands (2021-03-20)
diskstat A program to display consequences of changing clustersize (2021-03-20)

Maintained by the OpenOffice on OpenVMS porting Project.