On Wed 17 Mar 2004 02:31, Larry Wall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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/) using perl-5.6.1, 5.8.0, & 5.9.x, and 806 on HP-UX 10.20 & 11.00, 11i, AIX 4.3, SuSE 8.2, and Win2k. http://www.cmve.net/~merijn/ http://archives.develooper.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] send smoke reports to: [EMAIL PROTECTED], QA: http://qa.perl.org
