🚀 go-pugleaf

>While I'm at it, I'd like to complain about third-party vendors whose
>installation kits directly patch HELPLIB.HLB.  This tends to cause
>system managers lots of pain the next time the system goes through a
>major upgrade.  DEC gives you a clean copy of HELPLIB, and you now
>have to go through and remove the third party modules....  This is
>pretty silly.  The "correct" thing to do would be to let the manager
>specify the library to add onto.  Thus, if you want a "true" top level
>command you can get it, but for those of us with segmented, local
>systems, none of the standard system files get modified.

I used to think that adding things to files like HELPLIB.OLB,
DCLTABLES.EXE, STARLET.OLB, etc. was a bad idea.  Of course, I started
out in this under VMS V2.2 and a new upgrade of VMS wiped all local
additions: of course it also wiped ALL additions made by DEC layered
products.

Now, we have lots and lots and LOTS of DEC layered products and it
is not so simple (or nice) to require system managers to re-install
the works after a VMS upgrade.  Anyway, I noticed something when
I did the VMS V4.4 upgrade (a fun, fun, fun couple of weekends) in
that the installation procedure seems to make the effort to carry
any "foreign" (i.e., non-VMS) entries in HELPLIB, STARLET and DCLTABLES
over into the new versions.  Did anyone else notice this?  Is DEC
maybe changing VMS upgrades to not require the re-installation of
local changes to these files?  I'd like to think so (I figure its
being driven by the need to retain the additions made by DEC layered
products).