Re: [PATCH 3/4] Makefile: allow building without perl

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Sat, Apr 04, 2009 at 03:47:29PM -0700, Robin H. Johnson wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 03, 2009 at 03:32:20PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
> > For systems with a missing or broken perl, it is nicer to
> > explicitly say "we don't want perl" because:
> Part of the patch got missed. In the case of missing perl, we can detect it,
> originally we had a compare of PERL_PATH for emptiness.

Thanks. I was hesitant on this at first because I think the behavior
should be the same as with TCLTK_PATH, but I didn't realize that
TCLTK_PATH already automagically sets NO_TCLTK in the same way.

> +ifeq ($(wildcard $(PERL_PATH)),)
> +PERL_PATH =
> +NO_PERL = NoThanks
> +NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER = NoThanks
> +export NO_PERL NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER
> +endif

The TCLTK code is just:

  ifeq ($(TCLTK_PATH),)
  NO_TCLTK=NoThanks
  endif

I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with the wildcard, unless
it is "PERL_PATH = /usr/*/perl" or similar, but that seems a bit crazy
to me. It should probably behave the same as TCLTK_PATH, though (so if
there is a good use case, TCLTK_PATH should be enhanced).

I don't think there is a point in setting NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER if NO_PERL
is set, and I believe the export is pointless, as I described in an
earlier email.

-Peff