Z/OS port? Hey! Quit laughing!

[gglibertine]

So my husband is a mainframe guy. He's gotten interested in Angband (downloading it for his Mac tonight), and was wondering if there might be a port he could run on the Z/OS system he works with during the day.

He's fairly sure there's a C compiler (though he works in COBOL, yes, really), but since Z/OS writes things to the screen in a completely different way than a Unix system, he's not sure if it would be at all compatible.

I figured it couldn't hurt to ask, though I'm guessing if there is such a thing at all it's probably a long-abandoned port of some older Roguelike game.

Anyone?

[Nick]

So there used to be a whole raft of ports, but they were cleared out in going from 3.0.7s3 to 3.0.8. In particular, there was an IBM port which may be applicable. You can find the source code to all old versions either at rephial, or at the Angband variant repository.

Let us know how it goes

[gglibertine]

So there used to be a whole raft of ports, but they were cleared out in going from 3.0.7s3 to 3.0.8. In particular, there was an IBM port which may be applicable. You can find the source code to all old versions either at rephial, or at the Angband variant repository.

Let us know how it goes

Excellent! Thank you! I'll let him know.

[brbrbr]

Are you holding tongue in your cheek, gglibertine???

There is android version on rephial, if he wants to play it at work on his phone/tablet

[gglibertine]

Are you holding tongue in your cheek, gglibertine???

There is android version on rephial, if he wants to play it at work on his phone/tablet

Nope, totally serious. I don't see anything IBM-flavored in the archives, but this seems to indicate it may be sufficiently Unix-compatible to compile the source. Which is good since he's got an iPhone.

My husband is one of those strange people who only programs for work. He got into a training program for z/OS and COBOL that was specifically designed for the project he works on. Outside of that he uses a Mac and is entirely clueless about Unix.

On the other hand, if you need to know *anything* about analog audio, he's your guy.

[SaThaRiel]

Hey, many mainframe LPARs are nowadays running Linux, maybe this is an idea? The mainframe has to offer options for people that don't work since 50 years in IT
Honestly i started the IBM Mainframe Contest they offered recently and there they present sure the basics like datasets and so on, but then they also introduce you to Linux on Mainframe and even their Bluemix stuff (Mainframe-cloud-based app deployment).
I really don't think that someone needs to take the burden and port Angband to mainframe, the whole structure is different and trying to think of library compatibilities or availability causes shivers...

[jrodman]

I am pretty curious what the point is of running it on z/OS vs zLinux, since I believe all hardware that can handle z/OS can handle zLinux, and it's common to have it installed.

Now, I'll believe Angband has assumptions somewhere that break on zLinux (arch change), but I'm pretty sure Zseries is a fairly normal arch as far as 64 bit stuff goes in terms of var sizes, pointer sizes, etc, so I'd expect code like angband to just build and run.

That said, there's certainly no fundmanetal barrier I know of to running it on Z/OS, but it sounds like more work than I expect anyone has done. I haven't dived for such problems, but I'd bet there are assumptions of ASCII in places that would have to be changed. If this can be resolved by some z/OS magic of running the compile and program inside an ascii configuration, there's the matter of whether a z/OS UNIX enviroment is availble on z/OS. If the goal is a fully native port, then the whole terminal layer will have to be ported.

[gglibertine]

Oh, come on, surely it would be worth it for the geek cred alone!

That said, he poked around a bit and decided that it is indeed way more trouble than it's worth, in much the same way I gave up on trying to mount a blender control panel on an electric guitar. Sure, with enough pickups you *can* have separate combinations for "blend," "puree," "shred," and "liquefy," but what are you going to *do* with all of them?

Nevertheless, the allure of "because I can" remains strong.