OpenVMS Boot Camp 2015
 
Moving OpenVMS C to ANSI/C

Track: Migration & Porting

Speaker
, CEO, Sector7


Description
The OpenVMS C compiler has been enhanced to compile C code which plays fast and loose with the standards. Several enhancements were added to easily take advantage of the many features of the operating system and that compiler accepts many code constructs that would generate errors on other compilers. These nice features and extensions really become a problem when the time comes to migrate the application code to another platform. The stricter compilers generate reams of errors and countless warnings when they are fed raw OpenVMS C code. In this presentation, we will look at some of the trouble areas that get in the way of an easy application migration and we look at tools and methodologies used to resolve the extensions issues and standardize the code to approximate the ISO 2011 C standard, which is far stricter than the prior versions and thus allows the treated code to be compiled error-free on other platforms such as Linux as part of a successful tools-based migration.

Experience Level
Advanced