OpenSSH 2.4.0 patch call..

[Mo DeJong]

On Thu, 28 Dec 2000, Corinna Vinschen wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 28, 2000 at 12:40:39AM -0600, mouring at etoh.eviladmin.org wrote:
> > On Wed, 27 Dec 2000, Mo DeJong wrote:
> > > I am still wondering about my patch to remove the fixpaths
> > > perl script and replace it with a sed script (it fixes the build
> > > under Cygwin). I am not sure if it is "undisputed" since I
> > > don't remember hearing anything back. I have appended it
> > > to this email in case it got lost in the shuffle.
> > 
> > Unless one of the other commiters signs off on it. I prefer to know it
> > works on all platforms.  sed is known to have a lot of strange quarks on
> > some platforms (solaris being one of them).  Where perl does not.
> > 
> > I'll be trying it on NeXT as soon as I finish bring NeXT back into the
> > fold of working platforms.
> > 
> > Granted, I still want to know how you install OpenSSL from source without
> > perl.=)  
> 
> With the help of an external contributed perl.
> 
> Anyway, perl is now becoming part of the Cygwin base distro so this
> shouldn't be an issue anymore.
> 
> Corinna

I disagree. Even if/when perl is added to the base Cygwin
distro, it is still an issue. What if folks decide to skip
the perl module?

For the matter, what about all the Unix systems that ship
without perl? Why should someone need to install perl
just to build a package? There is a good reason
autoconf is written using sh scripts. It runs in many
places without having to download a bunch of extra
things.

It is just a bad idea to require a lot of additional
tools on the build machine. It is fine if you require
them on the developers machine. Automake is written
in perl, but it outputs a Makefile.in that can be
used to build on a system without perl. This is the
kind of thing that does not seem too important when
you are the developer with a perfectly configured
machine. It is quite another story when you are
the poor sap that needs to install 15 extra
packages just to get something to build on some
strango system.

I think a quote from Mrs. Lovejoy says it best:
"Won't someone please think of the children!"

Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc