basis-3-synch-3 (unofficial Emacs 21.2 for VMS) available

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

release notes:

  big jump, including at least two newbie-programmer kludges, so expect
  a little instability.  if (when) you encounter a bug, let me know
  (preferably w/ an instructional bugfix :-) so we can improve things
  for the next release...

  thi

README excerpt:

  This dir contains a work-in-progress port of GNU Emacs to VMS.
  (I don't care what they call it, to me it will always be "VMS".)
  
  It is "work-in-progress" along several axes, each of which we
  move along a bit at at time (trying not to regress even though
  that can be difficult to determine w/o a proper test suite):
  Code Porting, Build Methodology, Installation Methodology, and
  GNU CVS Repository Integration.

NEWS excerpt:

  - basis-3-synch-3 | 2005-05-11
  
    - Code Porting
  
      - Bugfix: toggling marks in Dired recognizes non-filenames
  
        Previously, the marks would appear/disappear incorrectly for
        lines such as "Directory [FOO.BAR.BAZ]".
  
      - Bugfix: M-x compile no longer requires doubled double-quotes
  
        Before: write sys$output ""hello"",1,2,3,""there""
        Now:    write sys$output "hello",1,2,3,"there"
  
        This change also applies to M-x grep, for example:
  
        Before: fgrep -n ""GNU Emacs"" *.h *.c
        Now:    fgrep -n "GNU Emacs" *.h *.c
  
      - Bugfix: killing a shell buffer no longer leaves a zombie subproc
  
        Previously, when killing a (DCL) shell buffer, the child
        subprocess was not deleted straight away (although it would be
        deleted upon answering "yes" to the query on Emacs exit).
  
      - Bugfix: asynchronous timers now re-signal SIGALRM
  
        Apparently, VMS forgets the SIGALRM signal handler, so that
        alarms after the first one used to cause an AST fault (which
        typically would result in Emacs crashing).
  
      - Unixoid select(2) emulation revamped
  
        Generally, much more of the I/O has been integrated to use
        and/or hook into Emacs' event-processing internals, than before.
        These changes include a couple of (smallish) kludges to support
        the next item...
  
      - Frames can now be displayed using X Windows
  
        The logical DECW$DISPLAY needs to be set for this to work.
        To run on a tty in the presence of this logical, invoke Emacs
        with the "-nw" (no windowing system) switch, or alternatively,
        build Emacs w/o X support.
  
        This support makes use of Xlib directly, w/o any toolkits (see
        Build Methodology entry below).
  
    - Build Methodology
  
        Requires Autoconf for VMS version 1.104 or later.  (Please also
        try, and report bugs against, Autoconf for VMS version 1.105,
        which has support for "alternative" m4 programs.)
  
        You can now more-or-less safely pass "--with-x" (equivalent to
        "--with-x=YES") to the CONFIGURE.COM script.  The other options
        related to X support have yet to be tested -- YMMV!
  
        The CFLAGS are now:
                /DEBUG
                /WARNING=(DISABLE=(PTRMISMATCH1,UNDEFESCAP))
                /NAMES=SHORTENED
                /UNSIGNED_CHAR
                /EXTERN_MODEL=STRICT_REFDEF
        With the exception of the last one, all the others are different
        from before.  Notably, /NAMES=(AS_IS,SHORTENED) caused problems
        linking against the Xlib shareable image.
  
    - Installation Methodology
  
        No changes.
  
    - GNU CVS Repository Integration
  
        More small bits here and there (focus was on Code Porting).
        The patch filecount is now 95.

patch, instructions, and other files in dir:

  http://www.glug.org/people/ttn/software/emacs-for-vms/