Re: Faster depend written in Perl

G Sumner Hayes (sumner+@cmu.edu)
Sat, 27 Jul 1996 13:04:27 -0400 (EDT)

Todd Huss <thuss@gnu.uvm.edu> writes:
> On Sat, 27 Jul 1996, G Sumner Hayes wrote:
>
> > quinlan@charcoal.eg.bucknell.edu (Daniel Quinlan) writes:
> > >
> > > Defaulting to the perl version is probably better since most people
> > > don't have mawk.
> >
> > The traditional answer to this has been that not all Linux boxes have
> > perl, but all have awk. So we can't require perl to build the kernel.
> >
> > I don't know how valid this argument is these days, though.
>
> I would say it's still a valid argument, atleast for me ;-). In my case I
> use Linux on a laptop where space is very tight, so I don't install Perl.
>

Perhaps in linux 2.1 and later:

make depend - uses perl script
make awkdepend - uses awk script

Doing it the other way also makes sense, but some users might not
realize that the perl version exists and would get slow behaviour.
OTOH, it would be more downwards compatible.

Perhaps have a depend script that checks for the presence of perl and
does The Right Thing? Shouldn't be too hard and would be the ideal
solution:

make depend - check for perl and run the appropriate dep script
make perldepend - use the perl dep script
make awkdepend - use the awk dep script

I like that. A simple bash test for the existence of perl should do
it, too.

Just my $.02,

Sumner Hayes
sumner@cmu.edu