From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: PATCH [0/3]: Simplify the kernel build by removing perl. Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:03:11 -0800 Message-ID: <495FEEAF.5020005@zytor.com> References: <200901020207.30359.rob@landley.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-embedded-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: Leon Woestenberg Cc: Rob Landley , Embedded Linux mailing list , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton , Sam Ravnborg Leon Woestenberg wrote: > > I agree with Rob that the amount of required dependencies should be > kept to a minimum. > > If we only use 0.5% of a certain language (or: dependent package), > then rather implement that 0.5% in the existing language. > > Dependencies very quickly become dependency hell. If A requires B, > then A also inherits all (future) requirements of B, etc. etc. > > In my daily software development work with Linux and GNU software in > general, 10% of it is spent fighting/removing these extremely "thin" > or false depencies, so that it is usuable in embedded devices. > First of all, I largely consider this a joke. All real-life embedded kernel builds take place on hosted platforms; anything else seems to be done "just because it can be done", as a kind of show-off art project. Cute, but hardly worth impeding the rest of the kernel community for. We're not talking about general platform dependencies here, but build dependencies for the kernel. A platform that can build the kernel is not a small platform. Second of all, these patches are not fullworthy replacements. The original patch using bc had less dependencies, but bc failed on some platforms, mysteriously. The new patches have *more* environmental dependencies than that ever did. Third, if someone actually cares to do it right, I have a smallish bignum library at http://git.zytor.com/?p=lib/pbn.git;a=summary that might be a starting point. -hpa -- H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center I work for Intel. I don't speak on their behalf.