Due to problems with release 1.7b under CMS 7 and above all 8, and due to
a large amount of internal changes making it very difficult to issue
fixes at the moment, it looks like I cannot wait too long before
releasing 1.7c. Due to conferences and other commitments I will be away
most of next month, so we have to aim for a release date around the end
of this month.
Release 1.7c introduces support for CMS 8, fixes for CMS 6-8 and the SFS,
and rather significant performance enhancements for backbone servers. In
particular, updates to the "list of list" (GLOBLIST FILE) take from 8 to
10 times less CPU than previously, exclusive of any time spent updating
the LISTS database if you host it (that part of the code is unchanged).
For minor backbone servers, GLOBLIST FILE updates (X-LUPD jobs) could
amount to 50% of the CPU bill, so this change considerably decreases the
resource cost associated with joining the backbone. In addition, changes
to the handling of DD's improve the performance of DISTRIBUTE by 10-30%
in terms of CPU time, and may considerably reduce the amount of disk I/O
involved in the distribution. A side effect is that LSVDIST2 EXEC no
longer calls LSVCRC MODULE, which may or may not solve the REXX
"Interpreter failure" problem for sites which have not installed the IBM
fix. These changes, however, have introduced serious compatibility
problems for locally written extensions or modifications, due to changes
in data structures and conversion of a lot of central code to PASCAL.
Due to the scope of the changes, I expect beta-testing to uncover a lot
of problems, so do not apply unless you are prepared to do a fair amount
of troubleshooting. I need a couple of sites running CMS 4-5, at least
one VM/SP site, but I am mostly interested in CMS 7-8 sites. In addition,
I need one site running the LISTS database, which I may well have broken
and do not run locally (no way to test it myself). Thanks in advance for
your cooperation. Note that I have set the 'Reply-To:' to point to me.
Eric
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