From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

We have written an Antlr4 grammar for OpenVMS Basic and adapted the
Cobol85 grammar to parse OpenVMS Cobol. We have managed to get both of
them to be a language sensitive editor plugin (.nbm) for NetBeans 28 but
this is the very first version to run and it does have some problems
with larger files. If anyone is interested in looking at them or helping please contact me.

We are also working on another plugin to connect a local folder on a PC
to an OpenVMS directory to allow the editing/compile process accessible
from NetBeans.

Jeffrey Coffield
www.digitalsynergyinc.com
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms


On 2/14/26 10:48 AM, jeffrey_dsi wrote:

We have written an Antlr4 grammar for OpenVMS Basic and adapted the
Cobol85 grammar to parse OpenVMS Cobol. We have managed to get both of
them to be a language sensitive editor plugin (.nbm) for NetBeans 28 but this is the very first version to run and it does have some problems
with larger files. If anyone is interested in looking at them or helping please contact me.

We are also working on another plugin to connect a local folder on a PC
to an OpenVMS directory to allow the editing/compile process accessible
from NetBeans.

Did you start from scratch or did you use the old HP Distributed
NetBeans for OpenVMS? If memory serves it worked ok but was awfully
slow (and I never tried Cobol).

https://www.zx.net.nz/mirror/h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/ips/netbeans/distnb.html

https://sourceforge.net/projects/distributednetb/

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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms



On 2/14/26 12:33, Craig A. Berry wrote:

On 2/14/26 10:48 AM, jeffrey_dsi wrote:

We have written an Antlr4 grammar for OpenVMS Basic and adapted the
Cobol85 grammar to parse OpenVMS Cobol. We have managed to get both of
them to be a language sensitive editor plugin (.nbm) for NetBeans 28
but this is the very first version to run and it does have some
problems with larger files. If anyone is interested in looking at them
or helping please contact me.

We are also working on another plugin to connect a local folder on a
PC to an OpenVMS directory to allow the editing/compile process
accessible from NetBeans.

Did you start from scratch or did you use the old HP Distributed
NetBeans for OpenVMS?-a If memory serves it worked ok but was awfully
slow (and I never tried Cobol).

https://www.zx.net.nz/mirror/h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/ips/ netbeans/distnb.html

https://sourceforge.net/projects/distributednetb/

We had the grammar files from another project and NetBeans has a
NetBeans module as a project type. A lot of fiddling and some help from ChatGPT got me going.

I tried to get the Distributed NetBeans from HP many years ago but it
was for NetBeans 7 and we were up to NetBeans 9 and I don't think we
ever got it to work.

This works with NetBeans 28 and it does have speed issues on larger
files but I haven't done any optimization yet. I may have to change the
parser from Antlr4 to something else to get the speed up but that
remains to be seen.
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 2/14/2026 11:48 AM, jeffrey_dsi wrote:

We have written an Antlr4 grammar for OpenVMS Basic and adapted the
Cobol85 grammar to parse OpenVMS Cobol. We have managed to get both of
them to be a language sensitive editor plugin (.nbm) for NetBeans 28 but this is the very first version to run and it does have some problems
with larger files. If anyone is interested in looking at them or helping please contact me.

We are also working on another plugin to connect a local folder on a PC
to an OpenVMS directory to allow the editing/compile process accessible
from NetBeans.

How does it compare with VMS IDE (VS Code with VSI's VMS plugin)?

Arne

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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms



On 2/14/26 16:53, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

On 2/14/2026 11:48 AM, jeffrey_dsi wrote:

We have written an Antlr4 grammar for OpenVMS Basic and adapted the
Cobol85 grammar to parse OpenVMS Cobol. We have managed to get both of
them to be a language sensitive editor plugin (.nbm) for NetBeans 28
but this is the very first version to run and it does have some
problems with larger files. If anyone is interested in looking at them
or helping please contact me.

We are also working on another plugin to connect a local folder on a
PC to an OpenVMS directory to allow the editing/compile process
accessible from NetBeans.

How does it compare with VMS IDE (VS Code with VSI's VMS plugin)?

Arne

I haven't used the VSI plugin because it's a licensed product and none
of my customers want to buy a license. We use NetBeans for Java
development and it would be nice to use the same editor and features for
the OpenVMS code. Also if this is useful we will release it as open source.

Jeff
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 2/19/2026 12:58 PM, jeffrey_dsi wrote:

On 2/14/26 16:53, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

On 2/14/2026 11:48 AM, jeffrey_dsi wrote:

We have written an Antlr4 grammar for OpenVMS Basic and adapted the
Cobol85 grammar to parse OpenVMS Cobol. We have managed to get both
of them to be a language sensitive editor plugin (.nbm) for NetBeans
28 but this is the very first version to run and it does have some
problems with larger files. If anyone is interested in looking at
them or helping please contact me.

We are also working on another plugin to connect a local folder on a
PC to an OpenVMS directory to allow the editing/compile process
accessible from NetBeans.

How does it compare with VMS IDE (VS Code with VSI's VMS plugin)?

I haven't used the VSI plugin because it's a licensed product and none
of my customers want to buy a license.

I thought it was free.

https://wiki.vmssoftware.com/VMS_IDE_Installation

does not mention license.

I am asking because I remember some earlier questions about its
Basic support which was let us call it basic (pun intended).

We use NetBeans for Java development and it would be nice to use the same editor and features for
the OpenVMS code.

That makes sense.

(but rare to hear about anyone still using NB as IntelliJ IDEA,
Eclipse and VS Code seems to taken much of the market for Java
IDE's)

Also if this is useful we will release it as open source.

That is what we need.

More open source for VMS!

Arne

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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 2026-02-19, Arne Vajhoj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 2/19/2026 12:58 PM, jeffrey_dsi wrote:

I haven't used the VSI plugin because it's a licensed product and none
of my customers want to buy a license.

I thought it was free.

https://wiki.vmssoftware.com/VMS_IDE_Installation

does not mention license.

https://code.visualstudio.com/license

implies you can only use it internally for free. I don't know if there's
more to it than that, given that it also claims the source code is
available under the MIT licence.

Simon.
--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 2/19/2026 2:36 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:

On 2026-02-19, Arne Vajh|+j <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 2/19/2026 12:58 PM, jeffrey_dsi wrote:

I haven't used the VSI plugin because it's a licensed product and none
of my customers want to buy a license.

I thought it was free.

https://wiki.vmssoftware.com/VMS_IDE_Installation

does not mention license.

https://code.visualstudio.com/license

implies you can only use it internally for free. I don't know if there's
more to it than that, given that it also claims the source code is
available under the MIT licence.

Basically VS Code is free to use. It has like 40+ million users
worldwide and in SO surveys 70% of developers use it (not
necessarily exclusively).

I believe the licenses say that:
* if you use the MS Build then you can install it
on your own PC and on every PC in your company,
but you cannot install it on another company's PC
* if you use your own build then you can install it
on your own PC and on every PC in your company and
on another company's PC

That is not very limiting.

Arne

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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms



On 2/19/26 10:05, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

(but rare to hear about anyone still using NB as IntelliJ IDEA,
Eclipse and VS Code seems to taken much of the market for Java
IDE's)

-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a Also if this is useful we will release it as open source.

That is what we need.

More open source for VMS!

Arne

We support several large NetBeans Platform applications that would have required significantly more time to develop otherwise. The others are
only IDE's.

Jeff

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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:55:57 -0500, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

I believe the licenses say that:
* if you use the MS Build then you can install it on your own PC and
on every PC in your company, but you cannot install it on another
company's PC
* if you use your own build then you can install it on your own PC
and on every PC in your company and on another company's PC

That is not very limiting.

Still a non-Free licence, though.
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 2/19/2026 11:43 PM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:55:57 -0500, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

I believe the licenses say that:
* if you use the MS Build then you can install it on your own PC and
on every PC in your company, but you cannot install it on another
company's PC
* if you use your own build then you can install it on your own PC
and on every PC in your company and on another company's PC

That is not very limiting.

Still a non-Free licence, though.

Not really.

The MIT license of the source code allows you do whatever
you want with it.

Arne

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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On Fri, 20 Feb 2026 07:21:24 -0500, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

On 2/19/2026 11:43 PM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:55:57 -0500, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

I believe the licenses say that:
* if you use the MS Build then you can install it on your own PC
and on every PC in your company, but you cannot install it on
another company's PC
* if you use your own build then you can install it on your own PC
and on every PC in your company and on another company's PC

That is not very limiting.

Still a non-Free licence, though.

Not really.

The MIT license of the source code allows you do whatever you want
with it.

Then the above restrictions would not apply.
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.vms

On 2/20/2026 6:23 PM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 20 Feb 2026 07:21:24 -0500, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

On 2/19/2026 11:43 PM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:55:57 -0500, Arne Vajh|+j wrote:

I believe the licenses say that:
* if you use the MS Build then you can install it on your own PC
and on every PC in your company, but you cannot install it on
another company's PC
* if you use your own build then you can install it on your own PC
and on every PC in your company and on another company's PC

That is not very limiting.

Still a non-Free licence, though.

Not really.

The MIT license of the source code allows you do whatever you want
with it.

Then the above restrictions would not apply.

Of course they do.

It is very simple.

You can take the source code under MIT license and
you just need to comply with that (which is easy as
it practically allows for everything).

You can take a binary installer from MS
under MS license and you just need to comply
with that. And it has a restriction on distributing
outside your org.

Very similar to Linux.

You can take kernel and other pieces source
code under GPL and you just need to comply with that.

You can buy a prebuilt install kit from RHEL
under their license and you just need to comply with
that. RHEL license actually says "You may make a commercial
redistribution of the Programs only if (a) permitted under a
separate written agreement with Red Hat authorizing such
commercial redistribution or (b) you remove and replace all
occurrences of Red Hat trademarks and logos.".

You have a thousand other ways to get Linux.

You also have a few other ways to get VS Code:
VSCodium - which is an open source grass root project
AntiGravity - Google
+some more "VS Code as AI platform" flavors

You would probably like VSCodium:
https://vscodium.com/

(they also explain that MS VS Code actually comes with
builtin telemetry!!)

I would expect the VSI VMS extension to work in all
the forks. But I have not tried it.

Arne





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