RE: VMS port

[Pavel Fedin]

 Hello!

> The VMS port is actively and capably maintained by Hartmut Becker.  The
> ChangeLog shows he provided VMS fixes for 4.0 as recently as September.

 Ah, i see. Thanks for pointing at.

> It's easier if patches are targeted for specific results, so it's best
> not to include major refactorings, like removing ports, in the same
> patch.

 I know, this is what i'm going to do. Actually, i want to fix output-sync for 
spawn()-based flavor. This includes EMX, DOS and potentially Cygwin. Currently 
output-sync option will not work in that ports, because the related fragment:
--- cut ---
          /* Divert child output if output_sync in use.  */
          if (child->output.syncout)
            {
              if (child->output.out >= 0)
                outfd = child->output.out;
              if (child->output.err >= 0)
                errfd = child->output.err;
            }
--- cut ---
 is for some reason under #else branch only (where fork() is used). I think 
that the best way to fix this is to move this fragment out of #ifdef's. But 
above there's one more #ifdef VMS fragment, which also seems to ignore 
child->output settings. I see that VMS version of 'child_execute_job' gets the 
complete 'child' structure, i have checked it but it seems to ignore these new 
members.
 So i've got one more question - may be this fragment should become completely 
generic ? Just with some note that VMS code should also implement handling for 
it.

Kind regards,
Pavel Fedin
Expert Engineer
Samsung Electronics Research center Russia