[ On Tuesday, June 18, 2002 at 21:27:25 (+0200), Alistair Crooks wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: BUILD_DEPENDS on autoconf
>
> On Fri, May 31, 2002 at 01:04:31PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > [ On Friday, May 31, 2002 at 13:37:06 (+0200), Alistair Crooks wrote: ]
> > > Subject: Re: BUILD_DEPENDS on autoconf
> > >
> > 
> > Interesting numbers, but rather pointless and extremely misleading out
> > of context.
> 
> The point of those numbers, dude, was that they *WERE* the damn
> context.

No, they are way out of context for the issue at hand.  Attempting to
call them "the context" is exactly the kind of mis-direction I'm
claiming you're doing here.

You're using a slow computer.  You're complaining about how long it
takes to build something on a slow computer.  We all know how slow your
computer is.  Many of us have slower computers that we use daily.  At
least some of us don't complain about how slow our computers are even
when we task them with big jobs like building Perl.  We go do something
else and patiently await their completion.

The context here is that you're using a slow computer.  Of course it's
going to take a long time to build a large package like Perl!  WTF do
you expect?  Miracles?  An SS-20 or something even faster?

> Again, completely off base. I was not talking about building either
> a kernel, a release, xsrc, a blue toothbrush, Homer's Iliad, the
> weather in Milwaukee, or a spaceship from Mars. I was talking about
> building the sudo package.

Then either don't use pkgsrc to build your sudo, or install the binary
package.  _YOU_ chose to use pkgsrc.  _YOU_ know, probably as well as
anyone else, the consequences (though that you're still at this
discussion is beginning to make me wonder).  If you don't need perl for
any other reason on your slow machine(s) then you shouldn't be building
software on them with pkgsrc.  Either build it by hand, or install a
pre-built binary package.

There are lots of us with far faster but compatible machines, and I'm
sure at least one of us can build binary packages for you.  Hell given
that you're an active maintainer and supporter of pkgsrc I'm sure
someone with even marginally deep pockets can afford to give you a more
powerful machine (eg. an SS-20) for this work.  I can't (yet) do this,
but you probably need only ask.  Moaning about a requirement for Perl
(as despicable as it is), is no way to improve your situation
w.r.t. actually being able to build and use Perl.

(I do have a static-linked perl binary package available for 1.5W that
installs with prefix=/usr, but I don't, and won't likely ever, have a
binary sudo package....  :-)

> And this is the crucial thing - they're not needed. Perl is not a
> necessary pre-requisite to building sudo. It never has been. It
> never will be. Deal.

Perl might not be needed for just building something like sudo.  BUT:

Perl _IS_ needed whenever a package in pkgsrc requires modifications to
its GNU Auto* subsystem.  That's the way those things work.  You can try
to avoid making such modifications, and you can try to use pkgsrc to
maintain the changes to intermediate files, but that is FAR harder than
just biting the bullet and installing Perl on your build machines.  That
is an unfortunate thing, but that's the way the world has come to be
(I'd rather those things were written in Ruby or scheme or some saner
language, but I didn't write them and I'm not offering to re-write
them).  You don't have to like it, I know I don't, but we do have to
live with it.  In the long run you cannot win in your fight to avoid
using Perl to build software.  The GNU Auto* tools are growing and
changing and making modifications to a source package and then building
it is becoming ever more reliant on Perl, like it or not.  If you took a
moment to understand the evolution and use of the GNU Auto* tools I'm
sure you'd see this for yourself.  Pkgsrc must evolve to work
simultaneously with multiple versions of the GNU Auto* tools (both for
itself and for external use by developers who use pkgsrc to install
their tools).  I've done the first part of this work already and proven
that it's possible and workable.  I've submitted the core of my work to
GNATS.  You'd waste less of both our time by simply moving forward with
these changes while you wait patiently for Perl to build on your SS-2.

(now of course the real question comes down to why you were installing
an abomination like sudo!  ;-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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