Re: [HACKERS] make install fails in perl5 ...

Well, I didn't do it, but I agree with whoever took it out. You cannot
test at *configure* time to see whether the invoker of configure is
root. It is not reasonable to expect people to do the configure and
build as root, even if they su to root for the install step (which
is surely the WRONG thing for a Postgres install anyway!)

Installing as root is fine; running as root is not.

I wouldn't care for a test on rootness even if it were done at the right
time, ie, install step. That's an entirely unwarranted assumption about
how people set up their file ownership. (For example, on my machine the
Perl5 tree belongs to user "gnu", not root.) A more useful test would
be whether you have write permission on the Perl5 install tree top-level
directory, but that seems to require knowing where the Perl5 install
tree *is*, a fact that's buried inside the Perl-generated makefile.

We don't really need to test this. Use --with-perl if appropriate.
It will automatically find the right stuff via perl.

Maybe we could modify src/interfaces/Makefile along this line:

No. Why can't we rely on people using --with-perl correctly to
specify if they do or do not want perl. The whole point of the recent
run-around with the perl Makefile stuff was so that postgres could be
installed without perl and later someone could do the normal perl
install in that directory. You get this functionality by running
configure without the --with-perl option and all is well.

What am I missing?

Cheers,
Brook