[daip] Re: AIPS for VMS

[Eric Greisen]

Klopotic, Jeffrey M writes:
 > Dear AIPS,
 > I'm interested in obtaining the VMS version of AIPS.  Per your offer, I
 > would either like to obtain a CD or if possible be allowed to download the
 > files.
 > 
 > I'd also be interested in contacting other VMS users of AIPS.
 > 
 > TIA,
 > 
 > Jeffrey M. Klopotic
 > Systems Software Engineer VI
 > Lockheed-Martin/MILSTAR Project
 > MASC Software Support
 > 408-742-6804  
 > jeffrey.m.klopotic at lmco.com

You may certainly go to our web pages:

     http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/aips

where you will find instructions for downloading the gnu zipped tar
copy of either 31DEC01 (frozen) or 31DEC02 (development) versions of
AIPS.   They are available without charge.  CDs for Linux and Solaris
are available but not for VMS.  These CDs of course have all the
source code and documentation, but they are easy to get via ftp.

So far as I know there are no VMS users of aips and I suspect that
large portions may not even work under VMS.  No one has tested it in
that environment in many many years.  It used to work and well under
VMS, so we might be suprised.  But NRAO has not had a VMS machine for
this purpose in 10 years or so and, when we polled our user community
at that time, we found very little support for continuing a real VMS
presence.

I assume that VMS has changed over the years and that tools like gzip
and tar and X Windows and make are now available under it.  This will
certainly give one a fighting chance, but it will be work.

I will point out that the salaries that will be spent to get a VMS
version working would buy several 2 GHz Linux boxes capable of running
AIPS far faster than any VMS systems now available.

Eric Greisen