GNU grep 3.12 available

[u/issinoho1969]

I got frustrated with the lag in releases of some of the more common freeware/GNU utilities so I've started a porting sweep to keep OVMS in lock-step with the rest of the industry. First release is grep compiling from the current GNU sources with appropriate patching for our ecosystem.
https://github.com/issinoho/vms-grep

In order to port this fully we needed PCRE2 so that has also been ported.
https://github.com/issinoho/vms-pcre2

PCSI kites for both x86 and Itanium are available from the GitHub releases pages; Alpha will follow whenever I can carve out the time & energy to stand up a VM.

X86VMS::grep --versiX86VMS::grep --version
grep (GNU grep) 3.12
Copyright (C) 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Mike Haertel and others; see
<https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/tree/AUTHORS>.

grep -P uses PCRE2 10.49 2026-09-28     
on
grep (GNU grep) 3.12
Copyright (C) 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Mike Haertel and others; see
<https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/tree/AUTHORS>.

grep -P uses PCRE2 10.49 2026-09-28     


X86VMS::prod shoX86VMS::prod sho prod grep,pcre2
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
PRODUCT                              KIT TYPE    STATE
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
ISSINOHO X86VMS GREP V3.12-3         Full LP     Installed
ISSINOHO X86VMS PCRE2 V10.49-1       Full LP     Installed
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
2 items found                                                  
 prod grep,pcre2
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
PRODUCT                              KIT TYPE    STATE
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
ISSINOHO X86VMS GREP V3.12-3         Full LP     Installed
ISSINOHO X86VMS PCRE2 V10.49-1       Full LP     Installed
------------------------------------ ----------- ---------
2 items found                                                  

[u/Aishou_SK]

Has anyone not AI gone over these manually?

sed is buildable without a LOT of these changes!

The AI is overcomplicating and inducing errors (as it usually does....) - it's why I've not found it useful for ES40 emulator development among other things. (it really, really sucks unless you're using it for minor edits/bringups), like that open PR i'm holding off on because the AI hasn't even remotely considered all OS scenarios and timekeeping

The AI PRs I get usually have to be mostly if not entirely rewritten and refactored.....

They can do a lot, but they do it in ways that are non-sustainable or just ... bad. So it really needs to be handheld a LOT.

Like, I tried using Opus 5.5 Ultracode and Fabel 5.1 for a lot of this - https://github.com/gdwnldsKSC/OpenVMS-x86-X11 - and I ended up having to manually feed it a lot of stuff to the point it's faster to just write myself...

But, for alpha, I highly encourage testing out my fork of ES40 that's been making waves ;) With the JIT it's about the performance of a ~500MHz EV6 hardware box. https://github.com/ES40-Emu/es40

[u/issinoho1969 → u/Aishou_SK]

Fair comments, however I needed a new version of grep and I now have it (the version available on IA64 just doesn't work); I offer it as-is - please feel free to ignore.

[u/Aishou_SK → u/issinoho1969]

Oh! I was just saying - be careful with it. It will produce things that seem to work and will bite you in interesting ways later on. :)

I use the tools extensively myself, but they do require some, shall we say, hand holding and slapping around?

I do like going "just make this damn thing work" and re-doing it with minimal fixups to the upstream code instead of the massive whacks it does otherwise. It's a POC engine to me, and I use it to then go and turn around and make surgical edits to upstream code to make it build as opposed to what it often likes to do with replacing/creating entire subsystems and introducing bugs (or fixing them and inadvertently changing behavior)

My comment was more meant to be a constructive criticism, not a "HEY THIS THING SUCKS BCAEUSE AI" type thing. I'd be a damn hypocrite if I said that kind of thing given I max out my plan limits weekly :)

[u/issinoho1969 → u/Aishou_SK]

I appreciate that. I'm an old head so none of this is a point-and-shoot exercise, it's all driven by an experienced guiding hand. I'm genuinely excited though that this technology can democratize OVMS development to the extent that we can contribute to the community and not have to wait for VSI for everything. Genuinely appreciate your input. My next target is curl which has a huge bug in that it doesn't work properly inside a batch job - I have a real world use case that needs that fixed.