On Mon, 1 Nov 2004, James deBoer wrote:
> Some systems, notable Debian, ship perldoc and perl as seperate
> packages. The presence of Perl does not imply the presence of perldoc.
>
> This patch will test to see if perldoc actually works, aborting the
> configuration if it does not.
I don't feel strongly about this, but I think aborting during
configuration is a bit extreme at present. If I don't have perldoc, the
'make' process currently ends with a loud failure, but at least I can
still see if parrot Configures and builds at all, and I can still run
'make test'. The only thing I can't do is install the documentation,
which really isn't relevant yet because the whole installation system
isn't really designed yet, and because there isn't really much to do (for
most of us) with an installed parrot anyway.
This is not a mere hypothetical case. In the main build environment I use
to test parrot, no perldoc is available, though I certainly have lots of
other copies of perldoc elsewhere available to me. In the long run, parrot
won't be using perldoc to extract documentation anyway. The reliance on
perl is a "temporary" convenience.
If you want to have Configure.pl complain loudly, that's probably a good
idea -- some users may not be aware that there's a separate perldoc
package -- but I don't see the need to require stuff that's not really
necessary.
--
Andy Dougherty [EMAIL PROTECTED]
