[Simh] [Announce] Emacs 21.2 for VMS/VAX

[lists at openmailbox.org]

Hopefully the following information will be of some interest and value to
people running VMS/VAX on SIMH.

Because of keyboard issues I found the native VMS editors to be difficult
to use. I have been using Emacs for a long time on other platforms so I
went looking for a copy to run on VMS/VAX but couldn't find a binary. I
don't have the skills or tools to build Emacs from source on VMS/VAX.

I have been using MicroEmacs 4.0 which is stable and runs very well on a
low spec SIMH host. However the features are minimal bordering on spartan.
It's not a very good editor for coding and seems to be relatively
unsupported although old builds are available for VMS/VAX. An appeal for
help on the post-fork MicroEmacs mailing list yielded thundering silence.

I brought up the issue on comp.os.mvs and one of the guys spent some time
getting gnu Emacs 21.2 working. There were a few problems initially but he
seems to have gotten it working. The performance on a low spec SIMH host is
unacceptable but on a reasonably modern PC it works great.

With the permission of the developer who built and got it working, I am
reposting the info from comp.os.vms here. Many thanks to 
hb <end.of at inter.net> for his generosity in making this available.

Any issues, discussion, etc. please follow up to comp.os.vms on usenet.

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I uploaded emacs21_2_vax.zip to https://www.sendspace.com/file/byw8z7.
Feel free to announce it on any other mailing list and/or copy the zip
archive to a VMS specific archive/repository.

--- 8< ---

This is the readme file of the emacs kit for VAX: emacs21_2_vax.zip.

GNU Emacs 21.2 for VAX/VMS

Contents of emacs21_2_vax.zip:

emacs21_2_vax.txt - this file
emacs-vax-bin.txt - how to use the binary kit
emacs-vax-build.txt - how to build emacs from the sources
emacs21_2_vax_bin.zip - the binary kit
emacs21_2_vax_src.zip - VAX specific files for building emacs

The binary kit was built on V7.3 without support for TCPIP and X11:
$ @[-.emacs212_3]configure --with-tcpip=NO --with-x=NO --WITH-X-TOOLKIT=NO -
        --prefix=bld_root:[LOCAL] --startupdir=bld_root:[LOCAL.STARTUP]

Building for any other configuration may require additional source code
changes. The supplied VAX specific sources are not intended to be
compiled on other VMS platforms. Some of the files may be seen as hacks
to get emacs running on VAX/VMS. The base source code for emacs is not
included in this kit. The base source code is a VMS version based on
emacs version 21.2. The source code can be found on the OpenVMS freeware
CD version V8.0: emacs/emacs21_2.zip. These sources are for building
emacs for Alpha. This zip archive contains temporary files, which are
not required for the build, as well as an Alpha executable image.
Unfortunately these sources were not found in the emacs git repository
on savannah.gnu.org.

Please note, officially the support for VMS was removed in Emacs 23.
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