Re: Make perl & examples optional

Hi Kaz, hi Thomas,

> Le 7 sept. 2020 à 08:57, Kaz Kylheku <[email protected]> a écrit :
> 
> 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.)

I disagree with Kaz here.  First of all, the examples are not tests,
they are examples.  And these examples have tests because I want to
make sure that the examples I provide the users with, work.  These
tests are not there to check Bison, but to check the examples.

I do not know how gemtoo treats the tests.  Thomas, do you run the
tests as part of packaging Bison?

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

Full agreed.

But Thomas's question is unrelated: he doesn't want to get rid of the
examples, he wants to get rid of Perl.  And he claims that one cannot
support the examples without Perl.  And I believe he is mistaken.  I
just tried again, successfully.

So let's go back to the real question: Thomas, what makes you think
Perl is needed?  What problem were you addressing?

Cheers!