perl should be optional like tcl

perl should be optional like tcl

[Sylvain Bertrand]

Hi,
I'm a gentoo user and since a long time I have been able to disable
the perl sweet thanks to the gentoo "-perl" use flag. Recently I
realized that was not possible anymore (I have *tons* of perl
dependencies pulled on my system because of this).
That's about perl, but it would be similar with all the
others:python,ruby,lua,ocaml,vala,webscript,D,foo and foofoo++.
tcl stays optional for the users who accept to have the tcl sweet
installed, and perl should be treated the same way. Namely in the
build system, perl should be made optional like tcl. The idea is to
resist the temptation to favor one by making a hard dependency on it.
Since git is getting more and more popular (it's the best :) ), more
and more "high level language" developers will be interested to
interoperate with it. In order to *fairly* and *cleanly* integrate any
bindings/sweet from those "high level languages", the idea would be to
put their bindings/sweet in their repective directory, and to make the
build system have toggles for them.
My intend is not to favor any of them, nor to be naughty with any of them.
For instance, regarding the web interfaces we have:
 gitweb (perl)
 wit (python)
 gitarella (ruby)
 git-php (php)
 cgit (C)
(We may have a C++ one, a lua one, ocaml one, a D one and, of course,
the foofoo++ one...)

Best regards,

  Sylvain BERTRAND


P.S. Yes, I dislike the fact that emerge is python and paludis is C++.
Indeed, I dislike the use of automake for a build system. The idea is
not make it worse than it is already, a command shell and gmake is
almost too much already.
-- 
use single GPL licensed software, use Linux and secure your digital freedom!

Re: perl should be optional like tcl

[Jeff King]

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 02:44:06PM +0100, Sylvain Bertrand wrote:

> I'm a gentoo user and since a long time I have been able to disable
> the perl sweet thanks to the gentoo "-perl" use flag. Recently I
> realized that was not possible anymore (I have *tons* of perl
> dependencies pulled on my system because of this).

Sure, it is possible to do this, and most of git would still work. You
would lose:

  - gitweb
  - interactive add ("git add -i")
  - send-email
  - CVS/SVN/arch integration (cvsimport, cvsserver, cvsexportcommit,
    svn, archimport)
  - git-relink (which I'm not sure is commonly used anyway)

The test scripts also use perl a bit, so you would lose the ability to
run the tests.

The right way would probably be to add a NO_PERL flag to the Makefile to
avoid building these programs.  I'm not sure anyone else cares enough to
spend time on this themselves, but you might try working up a patch.

-Peff