Re: PATCH [0/3]: Simplify the kernel build by removing perl.

Måns Rullgård
2009-01-02T10:46:03Z

Alejandro Mery <amery@opensde.org> writes:

> Christoph Hellwig escribió:
>> On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 10:26:37AM +0100, Arkadiusz Miskiewicz wrote:
>>
>>> On Friday 02 of January 2009, Rob Landley wrote:
>>>
>>>> Before 2.6.25 (specifically git bdc807871d58285737d50dc6163d0feb72cb0dc2 )
>>>> building a Linux kernel never required perl to be installed on the build
>>>> system. (Various development and debugging scripts were written in perl
>>>> and python and such, but they weren't involved in actually building a
>>>> kernel.) Building a kernel before 2.6.25 could be done with a minimal
>>>> system built from gcc, binutils, bash, make, busybox, uClibc, and the Linux
>>>> kernel, and nothing else.
>>>>
>>> And now bash is going to be required... while some distros don't need/have
>>> bash. /bin/sh should be enough.
>>>
>>
>> *nod* bash is in many ways a worse requirement than perl. strict posix
>> /bin/sh + awk + sed would be nicest, but if that's too much work perl
>> seems reasonable.
> well, bash is not worse as bash is trivial to cross-compile to run on a
> constrained sandbox and perl is a nightmare, but I agree bash should be
> avoided too.
>
> I think the $(( ... )) bash-ism can be replaced with a simple .c helper toy.

The $(( ... )) construct is standard POSIX shell syntax, see
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/xcu_chap02.html#tag_02_06_04

Bash supports $[ ... ] as an alternate syntax for the same thing.
Perhaps you were thinking of that.

--
Måns Rullgård
mans@mansr.com