Help Understanding Configure.pl Output

[Mr. Shawn H. Corey]

Hi,

I ran `perl Configure.pl` and I have some questions about its output.

First:

Determining if your C compiler is actually gcc.........................yes.
Determining if your C compiler is actually Visual C++...................no.
Enabling optimization...................................................no.

The first two makes sense given my system:
<http://www.magma.ca/~shawnhcorey/2006-07/1153500473.html> but what does
the last mean? Does it mean only the C compiler or everything? Does it
means it has disabled all optimization -O0 or using the default (which I
think is -O1)?

Second:

Determining if your platform supports GMP...............................no.
Determining if your platform supports readline..........................no.
Determining if your platform supports gdbm..............................no.

How important are these? Parrot compiles without them but am I missing
something?

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Just my 0.00000002 million dollars worth,
--- Shawn

"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by
doing them."
Aristotle

[Joshua Hoblitt]

On Fri, Jul 21, 2006 at 03:04:06PM -0400, Mr. Shawn H. Corey wrote:
> Determining if your C compiler is actually gcc.........................yes.
> Determining if your C compiler is actually Visual C++...................no.
> Enabling optimization...................................................no.
>
> The first two makes sense given my system:
> <http://www.magma.ca/~shawnhcorey/2006-07/1153500473.html> but what does
> the last mean? Does it mean only the C compiler or everything? Does it
> means it has disabled all optimization -O0 or using the default (which I
> think is -O1)?

It means that no optimization is enabled and debugging information is
embedded in the object files. It's virtually impossible to debug
optimized code and it can dramatically increase compilation times (there
are still quadratic algorithms in most compilers!). So it's reasonable to
default to no optimization when a project is under heavy development.
If you need the speed, pass --optimize to configure.

> Second:
>
> Determining if your platform supports GMP...............................no.
> Determining if your platform supports readline..........................no.
> Determining if your platform supports gdbm..............................no.
>
> How important are these? Parrot compiles without them but am I missing
> something?

Those are needed for 'Big' math support, readline, and hash files. It's
pretty subjective as to whether your missing that functionality or not.

Cheers,

-J

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