Re: configure-less Perl builds

[Nick Ing-Simmons <nik@tiuk.ti.com>]

Simon Cozens <simon@brecon.co.uk> writes:
>
>As the patch stands, it sacrifices everything for portability.
>`Everything' here currently includes things like opendir(), which is
>nasty. (but not insurmountable) The reason is, I'm not sure what we can
>sensibly assume - if anything - that a C library will give us. And if I
>want opendir() should I bank on there being a dirent.h, 

The easiest way is to look at what Configure does to make the decisions.
IIRC there are different options for the _name_ of the .h file and
for the members of the structure.

Perhaps "crazyperl" only compiles out-of-the-box on POSIX machines
where such calls and include files are "known".

>or should we
>implement it ourselves? 

How are you going to deduce the size and order of the fields, not
to mention padding between them?

>In fact, how much of the C library are we
>prepared to provide ourselves in order to get it up and working?

Suppose opendir is a system call and not C library read()ing a filedesc
open on the directory at all? (e.g. Win32 fakes opendir, and other
weird OSes Apollo/DomainOS, VMS, MVS, etc. probably do likewise at some
level.)

then that becomes "how much if the OS are we prepared to provide ourselves..."

In the limit we provide a i386 emulator written in ANSI C and use it to 
boot one canned version of linux -  then we know all the answers ;-)



>
>Oh, and general comments on the whole thing welcome.
-- 
Nick Ing-Simmons <nik@tiuk.ti.com>
Via, but not speaking for: Texas Instruments Ltd.

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References to:

Simon Cozens <simon@brecon.co.uk>

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