Re: NetBSD/vax vm for github testing

On Fri, 2025-01-03 18:32:00 +0000, David Brownlee <[email protected]> wrote:
> Jan & John's recent patch to fix perl-5.40 to build on VAX prompted a comment
> from perl upstream
> 
> "We probably overlooked this due to lack of smoke-testing reports from non-IEEE
> fp VAX systems.  Can you suggest how we might get such reports going forward?"
> 
> There is an existing package to run Github CI on NetBSD architectures supported
> by qemu - https://github.com/vmactions/netbsd-vm but that doesn't help VAX.
> 
> There is also https://github.com/AaronJackson/2.11BSD-Action which uses simh to
> test actions in a 2.11BSD PDP11
> 
> If someone were able to combine them we could provide people with a recommended
> way to add NetBSD/VAX to their CI pipeline (albeit on github which is mildly
> evil, but...)
> 
> Much kudos and a starting contribution towards a suitable amount of caffeine
> ($100) for anyone up for the challenge :)

What's really needed there? I never looked into Github's way of CI.
Building a NetBSD VAX install image is quite easy both from a Linux or
a NetBSD host.

  Installing the resulting ISO in a microvax3900 SIMH VM is easy as
well (doing that all the time with a simple expect script.) Running
something in there might be a bit fiddly (some masquerading /
forwarding needed), and we need to keep in mind that the newest
(pkgsrc) version of Python isn't yet/any longer supporting VAX.

  So if there are some docs about what _is_ there to use and what kind
of interface for the CI "driver" is needed, it's probably not hard to
do, though will require a few cycles to properly cook...

MfG, JBG

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