Re: [HACKERS] Re: setsockopt(SO_REUSEADDR) (Re: Call for porting reports)

Tom Lane writes:

> "Kardos, Dr. Andreas" <kardos(at)repas-aeg(dot)de> writes:
> > 1) psql cannot be made since perl is used to generate sql_help.h. There is
> > no perl on this machine. So configure doesn't help if perl is used anyway.
>
> sql_help.h is (or should be) part of the distribution tarball. Was it
> not present, or perhaps out-of-date? In any case the Makefile for psql
> looks like it will not try to regenerate sql_help.h unless configure
> found perl.

That was the idea but it doesn't quite work this way. The variable PERL is
hard-coded to be "perl" in Makefile.global.in, no testing is actually
done. (Wasn't my idea.) This will essentially prevent building psql on
machines without Perl *if sql_help.h needs to be rebuilt* (which it
shouldn't).

This leads to a second problem, however. There's a subtle difference
between targets of the form

sql_help.h: # no dependencies, no action

and

sql_help.h: ; # no dependencies, "do nothing" as action

The latter would be the righter thing to do because the former will
consider sql_help.h updated whenever the rule is run. This will in turn
lead to recompilation of help.c and thus psql for every make run. I just
learned that the other day.

I have a fix for both issues (the first involves AC_CHECK_PROGS, the
second is obvious), should I go for it?

--
Peter Eisentraut Sernanders väg 10:115
peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net 75262 Uppsala
http://yi.org/peter-e/ Sweden