Re: [PATCH 3/4] meson: require Perl when building docs

[Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>]

On Sat, Mar 29, 2025 at 10:56:45AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:
> 
> > From: Eli Schwartz <eschwartz@gentoo.org>
> >
> > When building our documentation we require Perl to generate the list of
> > commands via "cmd-list.perl". Having a Perl interpreter available is
> > thus mandatory when building documentation, but Meson does not enforce
> > this prerequisite. Thus, when all optional features that depend on Perl
> > are disabled, we won't look up the Perl interpreter, which will in the
> > end lead to an error at setup time:
> >
> > ```
> > $ meson setup builddir/ -Ddocs=man -Dperl=disabled -Dtests=false
> > [...]
> > Documentation/meson.build:308:22: ERROR: Tried to use not-found external program in "command"
> > ```
> >
> > There is already a list of other cases where we do need the Perl
> > interpreter. Building documentation should be one of those cases, but
> > is missing from the list. Add it to fix the issue.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Eli Schwartz <eschwartz@gentoo.org>
> > Commit-message-edited-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
> > Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
> > ---
> >  meson.build | 2 +-
> >  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> Two puzzling things.
> 
>  * How is this different from 7c8cd9c1 (meson: fix perl detection
>    when docs are enabled, but perl bindings aren't, 2025-03-16)?
> 
>  * This uses get_options('docs'); shouldn't it be
>    get_option('docs')?  With that changed, the patch becomes
>    identical to the patch from May 16th, but the proposed log
>    message seems to be vastly different.

Oh, yeah. I did try to double-check that the topic didn't yet end up in
'seen' or 'next', but I obviously failed.

> I'll drop this step from the series for now, as the other one
> already has been in 'next'.

Yup, makes sense, thanks!

Patrick