On Friday 07 December 2001 09:18 am, Andy Dougherty wrote:
> > Except, of course, for being one big honking file.
>
> That's a mere implementation detail :-). (Though one that's admittedly
> quite intimidating!) It isn't one big file until the very very end step.
> There's no reason it couldn't be a file that simply called a series of
> tiny scripts
>
> #!/bin/sh
> . U/intro
> . U/find-shell
> . U/cmdline
> . U/find-hints
>
> etc., except that it would then be even slower than it already is.
> (Probably not a significant effect now, but it would have been when
> Configure was originally designed.)
>
> The key idea is that the pumpkin holder runs 'make' ONCE to determine the
> dependencies and record the proper order to run the units in a file.
> End-users don't have to redetermine that order every time they build perl.
Oooh, a peek inside The Inner Circle.
> I'm not sure that It'd prove too useful in the long run, but I'd do it
> exactly the same way -- with 'make'. Specifically, if this were
> metaconfig, I'd run metaconfig, hand-edit its 'Wanted' file (which is a
> list of known symbols that it found) to pick the particular 'distinct,
> smaller config' I had in mind, and then re-run C< metaconfig -w > which
> would then "trust" my hand-edited 'Wanted' file and generate a Configure
> script for the subset of features I selected.
{sigh}
Perl has TMTOWTDI. *I* get stuck with ATWIRTWISTOR. (At Least When I
Reinvent The Wheel, It Still Turns Out Round.)
--
Bryan C. Warnock
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
