On Thu, 24 Aug 2023 14:57:53 -0400, Phil Smith III wrote: >I don't think SMP/E is evil, I think it's unfinished. As I wrote before, the >inconsistent support for symbols > How much of the need for symbols might be satisfied nowadays by: o JCLLIB INCLUDE members containing numerous // SET statements? o //SMPCNTL DD DATA,SYMBOLS=JCLONLY? (And other instream MCS.)
... reuse available facilities rather than innovating. > ... and the execrable error messages lead to tons of wasted time, > frustration, and hatred. Yet the actual concepts and functioning are pretty > cool-how often have you wanted to back off a Windows patch? So sad, too bad, > you applied it, your only option is a rollback to a previous checkpoint, if > you have one and can find it. Etc. > >If it supported symbols consistently and someone paid attention to the errors >and made them more coherent, several things would happen: > >1. Folks would make fewer errors >2. When they do make errors, they'd be able to say "Oh, right" and fix >them, rather than wasting hours >3. They wouldn't hate SMP/E as so many seem to > >Since, aside from vendors like us with automated testing, SMP/E results are (I >think?) unlikely to be subject to automation, changing errors seems like it >would be pretty safe. Actually, since the errors ARE so grim, what testing >exists is, I expect, like ours: it looks for RC=0 (or 4, sometimes) and if it >doesn't get what it wants, punts to a human anyway! -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
