Re: [MacPerl-Porters] On with the show; Volunteers Wanted!

[Prymmer/Kahn <pvhp@best.com>]

On 13 May 2000, Matthias Neeracher wrote:

> In article <000509161002.16da2@forte.com>, PVHP@forte.com writes:
> > Thanks.  I know that with the MPW-GM from Feb 2000 on Mac OS 9
> > that {Commands} has considerably more structure (it includes 
> > ",{MPW}:Scripts:" and several other paths for example).  I guess that 
> > what this means is I'll have to re-implement `Which` inside of 
> > Configure.MPW to handle these odd cases.  That is really too bad.
> 
> I was wondering whether I it would help if I included a prebuilt miniperl
> (named, e.g. "bootperl") in the distribution. It would add a bit more than 300K
> compressed, but we could switch to the PPT version of Patch and thus save that
> step.

As it turns out I think that the trouble that Larry encountered had
to do with two problems 1) an older MPW installation 2) difficulty
grabbing the Configure.MPW script from this server.  In particular
his copy of the script seemed to be missing (or have garbled) the
eight-bit characters and rendered it sub useful.  I should point out
that if the script encounters what it considers a misconfigured build
environment that it pops up a dialog box asking if you still want to
continue and you can answer "yes" to such questions and muddle through.
On the other hand if the script cannot be run reliably on other machines
then it's utility is quite limited.  I am still quite a newbie to 
distributing files for installation and consumption on Macs so don't
hesitate to comment (e.g. "Peter why did you binhex those files?").
If folded into a professionally prepared MacPerl kit I suspect that
such packaging troubles will disappear.

I personally like the idea of building something from source with
minimal dependence on extra dlls, objects, etc.  So I would prefer
it if it's possible to get away without a dependence on a
bootperl - but I do recognize the ease of packaging that it
represents.  As far as the need to patch it looked to me that the most of
MacPerl-patch-5.6.0 could go into perl 5.6.1 since the C and XS stuff
is protected with #ifdef MACOS_TRADITIONAL and the perl stuff
is protected with checks of $^O.  There is one chunk of the mod
to POSIX.xs that might be problematic, and the mods to xsubpp look
extensive.  At any rate the need to patch anything should eventually
disappear shouldn't it?  Why not submit the patch to p5p?
By the way it would be quite easy to remove the check for patch out of
Configure.MPW.

Peter Prymmer



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