From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Matt Keenan Subject: Re: PATCH [0/3]: Simplify the kernel build by removing perl. Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:18:52 +0000 Message-ID: <1230895132.1023.4.camel@bazbox> References: <200901020207.30359.rob@landley.net> <200901021026.37905.a.miskiewicz@gmail.com> <20090102094934.GB17841@infradead.org> <495DE995.1070002@opensde.org> <865953A9-E699-45E1-A726-F3F4EE41A0C9@mirell.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Return-path: In-Reply-To: <865953A9-E699-45E1-A726-F3F4EE41A0C9@mirell.org> Sender: linux-embedded-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" To: Mark Miller Cc: Alejandro Mery , Christoph Hellwig , Arkadiusz Miskiewicz , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Rob Landley , Embedded Linux mailing list , Andrew Morton , "H. Peter Anvin" , Sam Ravnborg On Fri, 2009-01-02 at 04:30 -0600, Mark Miller wrote: > On Jan 2, 2009, at 4:16 AM, Alejandro Mery wrote: >=20 > > Christoph Hellwig escribi=C3=B3: > >> On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 10:26:37AM +0100, Arkadiusz Miskiewicz wro= te: > >> > >>> On Friday 02 of January 2009, Rob Landley wrote: > >>> > >>>> Before 2.6.25 (specifically git =20 > >>>> bdc807871d58285737d50dc6163d0feb72cb0dc2 ) > >>>> building a Linux kernel never required perl to be installed on =20 > >>>> the build > >>>> system. (Various development and debugging scripts were written= =20 > >>>> in perl > >>>> and python and such, but they weren't involved in actually =20 > >>>> building a > >>>> kernel.) Building a kernel before 2.6.25 could be done with a =20 > >>>> minimal > >>>> system built from gcc, binutils, bash, make, busybox, uClibc, an= d =20 > >>>> the Linux > >>>> kernel, and nothing else. > >>>> > >>> And now bash is going to be required... while some distros don't = =20 > >>> need/have > >>> bash. /bin/sh should be enough. > >>> > >> > >> *nod* bash is in many ways a worse requirement than perl. strict= =20 > >> posix > >> /bin/sh + awk + sed would be nicest, but if that's too much work p= erl > >> seems reasonable. >=20 > >> > > well, bash is not worse as bash is trivial to cross-compile to run = =20 > > on a > > constrained sandbox and perl is a nightmare, but I agree bash shoul= d =20 > > be > > avoided too. > > > > I think the $(( ... )) bash-ism can be replaced with a simple .c =20 > > helper toy. > > > > Thank Rob for reopening the topic. > > > > Alejandro Mery >=20 > And actually, one of the things that I just recalled, is that several= =20 > of the Perl configure scripts in order to actually build itself, rely= =20 > on Bourne shell calls. So the argument to require a strict POSIX+sed=20 > +awk implementation rather than Perl to build the kernel, fails, sinc= e =20 > you already require some variant of shell greater than strict POSIX /= =20 > bin/sh to build Perl. So this is one less dependency. >=20 > Also, attempting to cross-compile Perl, is indeed a nightmare. >=20 Having cross compiled Perl, on to a Unix with a brain dead third party TCP/IP no less, only 4 years after starting to use Unix / Linux I can attest that it is not that difficult to cross compile. Heck it even run= s on those weird Crays that don't know which byte sex they are. Matt