Re: building without perl

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> So, is our policy that it's OK to use perl to generate things, as long
> as they are things that are architecture-independent and
> configuration-independent therefore could be pregenerated for the
> release tarball? If so, it seems we might be able to punt
> Gen_fmgrtab.sh and just keep Gen_fmgrtab.pl...

Yeah, that was discussed when Gen_fmgrtab.pl was written, but we kept
the old method around out of sheer conservatism (not to mention that the
early versions of Gen_fmgrtab.pl weren't very good).

>>> I think the last time that I ran into a machine that didn't have perl on
>>> it was not more recently than 1994 (I'm guessing someone is now going
>>> to tell me what a sheltered life I lead...).
>>
>> Yup.

> I suppose this was intended to be funny, but I'd be curious as to the details.

Actually, further investigation discloses that someone broke the no-Perl
defense in psql's makefile back in 8.0, and we hadn't noticed till now.
So it certainly seems to be the case that nobody associated with the
Postgres project works in a Perl-free environment. Nonetheless, the
makefiles are supposed to behave sanely if Perl is missing.

regards, tom lane