RE: Is ICU supported on z/OS and z/VM platforms?

I presume that you are talking about this list. 
http://oss.software.ibm.com/cvs/icu/~checkout~/icu/readme.html#HowToBuildSupported

ICU requires z/OS with USS (Unix System Services) in order for ICU to be 
built.  ICU has been known to work under MVS without z/OS USS, and you 
would have to read the readme.html that comes with ICU in order to build 
it correctly.

I don't know about z/VM itself.  You should try it, and see what happens. 
If z/VM can work with MVS binaries, then ICU will probably work for you. 
I've heard rumors that the z/VM 4.4 C/C++ compiler creates more portable 
code than before, and that might help.

Beyond the definitions of "reference platform" and "regularly tested" 
contained in the readme.html here is a more detailed description.


Reference platform: ICU will work on these platforms with these compilers. 
 The ICU core team has personally tested that ICU works without error on 
this OS with this compiler.  If an error is reproducible without a 
work-around on this configuration, we will consider creating an update 
release (the lack of a feature doesn't count).  This is an important legal 
distinction for support contracts (Documents of Understanding) within IBM.
Regularly tested: ICU should work on these platforms with these compilers. 
 Frequent users of ICU build on these platforms, and it should work for 
you too.
Rarely tested: ICU has been ported to these platforms, but may not have 
been tested there recently.  Build it and see what happens.


For you, there isn't much of a distinction between "reference platform" 
and "regularly tested".

Regarding "Support for Unicode Using Conversion Services", I think you're 
asking the wrong person.  As an ICU developer, I have preference to use 
ICU :-)  Several IBM products use ICU on z/OS both with and without USS. 
DB2 is one of those products.  People using XML4C 
<http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/xml4c/> on z/OS also frequently use 
ICU4C.

People use ICU because of its portability, robustness of Unicode support, 
flexibility of open source and its general good performance.  I personally 
don't use z/OS, and the porting of ICU to this platform comes from other 
people.  I don't know about the performance of "Support for Unicode Using 
Conversion Services", since I've never seen test results of such a 
comparison, but I believe ICU is very well suited for the other items that 
I just mentioned.

George Rhoten
IBM Globalization Center of Competency/ICU  San José, CA, USA




"Yu, Suelee" <[email protected]>
11/24/2003 04:15 PM
 
        To:     George Rhoten/San Jose/IBM@IBMUS, Srini Balasubramaniam 
<[email protected]>
        cc:     icu list <[email protected]>
        Subject:        RE: Is ICU supported on z/OS and z/VM platforms?


George,

I do not see z/VM is listed as one of the ICU supported platforms.
Is z/VM supported?  How is a "reference" platform different from a
"Regularly tested" platform?

Also, z/OS has a "Support for Unicode Using Conversion Services" product.
DB2 and most IBM languages use it.
Under what situations, should programmers use ICU instead of z/OS "Support
for Unicode Using Conversion Services"
On the mainframe platform?

Thanks in advance

Suelee