Re: Make perl & examples optional

On 2020-09-06 09:13, Akim Demaille wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
> 
>> Le 6 sept. 2020 à 16:41, Thomas Deutschmann <[email protected]> a 
>> écrit :
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> in Gentoo Linux we are carrying the following patch for quite some 
>> time
>> to make perl dependency which is required for examples optional.
>> 
>> Any chance to get this applied upstream?
> 
> I don't see how Perl is needed.  I do not mean Perl to be required,
> so you'll have to be more specific on why you think it is.
> 
> Besides, if I spent so much time providing users with examples, it
> is clearly not to see them removed by the distro.  These examples are
> part of the package, and must be treated like documentation.

I'd like to add that the examples are compiled and executed as test
cases during "make check". The --disable-tests option provided by this
patch completely unhooks these programs from being built and tested
by "make check". Thus if/when Gentoo runs "make check", those things
are not being tested. The main test suite still runs, but Bison is being
tested just a little less by the omission of the examples. (They
take very little extra time.)

If the problem is that the examples are being *installed* somewhere,
then the patching approach is puzzling.

Doesn't Gentoo have a mechanism, like a typical distro, for
selecting files from the temporary install directory, to go into
different kinds of packages: main, devel, doc, extras, ...

Surely, Akim's "must be treated like documentation" can be interpreted
as exactly that: the examples go into some bison-doc package?

Under what circumstances can a distro not remove unwanted material
from the package in its packaging post-processing, but have to resort
to patching the build steps of that package?