After 47 years, OpenVMS gets a package manager

As of the 18th of February, OpenVMS, known for its stability and high-availability, 47 years old and ported to 4 different CPU architecture, has a package manager! This article shows you how to use the package manager and talks about a few of its quirks. It’s an early beta version, and you do notice that when using it. A small list of things I noticed, coming from a Linux (apt/yum/dnf) background: There seems to be no automatic dependency resolution and the dependencies it does list are incomplete. No update management yet, no removal of packages and no support for your own package repository, only the VSI official one. Service startup or login script changes are not done automatically. Packages with multiple installer files fail and require manual intervention. It does correctly identify the architectures, has search support and makes it way easier to install software. The time saved by downloading, manually copying and starting installation is huge, so even this early beta is a very welcome addition to OpenVMS.
↫ Remy van Elst

Obviously, a way to install software packages without having to manually download them is a huge step forward for OpenVMS. The listed shortcomings might raise some eyebrows considering most of us are used to package management on Linux/BSD, which is far more advanced. Bear in mind, however, that this is a beta product, and it’s quite obvious these missing essential features will be added over time. Luckily it at least lists dependencies, so let’s hope actually automating installing them is in the works and will be available soon.

I actually have an OpenVMS virtual machine set up and running, but I find using it incredibly difficult – but only because of my own lack of experience with and knowledge about OpenVMS, of course. Any experience of knowledge rooted in UNIX-based and Windows operating systems is useless here, even for the most basic of CLI tasks. If I find the time, I’d love to spend more time with it and get more acquainted with the way it works, including this new package manager.