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Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 09:27:59 +0100
To: Larry Wall <la...@wall.org>
Subject: Re: Configure.pl and the history of the world
Cc: Perl6 Internals <perl6-intern...@perl.org>
In-Reply-To: <20040317013126.GA25518@wall.org>
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From: h.m.br...@hccnet.nl (H.Merijn Brand)

On Wed 17 Mar 2004 02:31, Larry Wall <la...@wall.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 07:47:25PM -0500, Dan Sugalski wrote:
> : Second, we're running over the same problems in system configuration 
> : that perl (and python, and ruby, for that matter) have already run 
> : across. Moreover, we're making the same decisions, only... 
> : differently. This is silly both because we're re-inventing the wheel 
> : and we're making the wheel with metric nuts instead of english.
> : 
> : We could go dig through perl's configure every time we add a new 
> : environment probe, but that'll get really old really quick. Instead, 
> : what I'd like is for someone (Oh, Brent... :) to go through perl's 
> : configure and dig out the tests in it, as well as the defaults that 
> : it has and just get all the config variables in once and for all. 
> : While some of what's in there we don't have to deal with (joys of C89 
> : as a minimum requirement) there's a lot of hard-won platform 
> : knowledge in there and ignoring it's foolish.
> 
> Er, yes, but...you might actually do better by looking at all the
> metaconfig units that go into generating Configure. Then you'd at
> least know what all the dependencies are.

Better even, the metaconfig units are loaded with comments that do
not make it to the final Configure script.

> Oh, and metaconfig will gladly do the work of weeding out the tests
> you're not interested in.

But the metaconfig units still hold the code and comment, so you don't
have to #ifdef/comment-out those unwanted parts and clutter the code

> Not using metaconfig (or something like it) would be the biggest
> mistake.  It's actually next to impossible to maintain something like
> a Configure script directly.

Who would maintain it? I've got no problem (yet) with maintaining it
for perl5, and I'm even working on backward compatibility for 5.005._xx,
so Configure and hints are usable for the complete actual range, and
thus save huge amounts of backporting time

The problem is that there are only a few knowledgable/interested in
doing this, ehh, less interesting part of the project (I still like it)

> Larry

-- 
H.Merijn Brand        Amsterdam Perl Mongers (http://amsterdam.pm.org/)
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