From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
cc: Christophe Pettus <christophe.pettus@pgexperts.com>,
        Vish Penmetsa <vish.penmetsa@gmail.com>,
        Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>,
        pgsql-advocacy@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: PostgreSql and VMS operating System
In-reply-to: <Z5O7HX4QQPQebEgo@momjian.us>
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Comments: In-reply-to Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
	message dated "Fri, 24 Jan 2025 11:09:01 -0500"
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Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 17:09:37 -0500
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Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 01:07:56AM -0800, Christophe Pettus wrote:
>> So, basically, if you want a maintained VMS port, you need to either dr=
ive the project yourself, or find others who will.

> This email thread from 2003 says VMS probably doesn't work anymore
> because of lack of testers:
> 	https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/200301071531.h07FVWI08147%40=
candle.pha.pa.us#0dbc1439f51ec7842125fb8ae200b6da

I doubt we ever had a working VMS port.  There are precisely zero
references to VMS in our commit log, so certainly there was never one
that got removed.  It's barely possible that PG "just worked" without
any patches under their POSIX emulation layer, but I could not find
any indication of successful users of PG-on-VMS in the mail list
archives either.

What I did find was occasional suggestions that we port to OpenVMS [1].
But nobody ever showed up to do the work, and the last such discussion
was in 2011.

Given that, I really doubt that there is critical mass to support
a port to VMS.  It's not enough to just show up with a patch for
such a port: there has to be an ongoing commitment to fix problems,
run buildfarm animals, and so on, and that takes multiple interested
people over a long period.  (I think it is pretty much exactly this
point that is the stumbling block for the current discussion about
whether to reinstate the AIX port [2]: there's nearly zero community
enthusiasm about AIX.)

Feel free to prove me wrong, but it's going to be a uphill climb.

			regards, tom lane

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/search/?m=3D1&q=3Dopenvms+port&l=3D&d=3D-1&=
s=3Dd
[2] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CY5PR11MB63928CC05906F27FB1=
0D74D0FD322@CY5PR11MB6392.namprd11.prod.outlook.com