4 ms·
Doesn't the Linux build system use perl as well?
by HarryHirsch 6y ago
Doesn't the Linux build system use perl as well?
- movaps 6y agoNope, it's a combo of makefiles (GNU flavour I think) and C called Kconfig.
- rkeene2 6y agoNot really. I created and maintained a Linux distribution, and while Perl was sometimes used it was almost never strictly required (i.e., it was for documentation or something that really would have been better if the release maintainer had already generated....). This covers a few hundred packages, like gcc, binutils, glibc, linux, core-utils, util-linux, flex, ... Notable, also, is that I didn't compile perl for my Linux distribution because perl's configuration system is terrible (there's an out-of-tree patch to make it less terrible, though).
- HarryHirsch 6y agoThat's right. Flex and bison is required, but no perl. No idea where that notion came from.
- kasabali 6y agoDeveloper scripts (checkpatch etc.) are written in perl, though it's not required for builds.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoProbably beats python and the continuous version idiocy - Python 2 vs Python 3, 3.7 vs 3.9 &c, p.p. If you have throwaway scripts in a startup, fine, but unacceptable when you are maintaining an OS that all the world relies on. You wonder - what does Dr Hipp use for sqlite? Never looked into that build system!
- snazz 6y agohttps://www.sqlite.org/draft/howtocompile.html https://www.sqlite.org/draft/howtocompile.html There's some tcl involved.
- NationalPark 6y agoPerl has its own version naming problem. But there's no reason to think it would be any more stable or secure than Python, which is in the critical path of all sorts of things (not just "throwaway scripts in a startup").
- lizmat 6y agoIf you're referring to Perl 6 versus Perl 5: that problem has been fixed by renaming Perl 6 to Raku (https://raku.org https://raku.org using the #rakulang tag on social media).
- timw4mail 6y agoLast I knew, OpenSSL required perl to build.
- rootw0rm 6y agoi just built nginx yesterday, and i needed perl for at least a couple of the static modules i added...
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y agoStill does. What about Git? Last I knew, it required Perl to build.
- zaarn 6y agoGit is partially written in perl.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y agoIt also links to libssl which requires perl to build.
- Daviey 6y agohttps://github.com/torvalds/linux/search?q=perl https://github.com/torvalds/linux/search?q=perl
- pantalaimon 6y agoNot anymore
- cbsks 6y agoAccording to the Linux kernel documentation: "You will need perl 5 and the following modules: Getopt::Long, Getopt::Std, File::Basename, and File::Find to build the kernel." https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/2324d50d051ec0f14a548e78554fb02513d6dcef/Documentation/process/changes.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/2324d50d051ec0f14a548... That was added 11 years ago(!!) so it may be out of date.