Re: [perl #79538] [PATCH] Add capability to exclude non-XS extensions

On Fri, Sep 06, 2013 at 07:12:46PM -0700, James E Keenan via RT wrote:
> On Fri Jan 06 23:46:45 2012, sprout wrote:
> > On Tue Nov 23 07:36:50 2010, doughera wrote:
> > > On Mon, 22 Nov 2010, Jan Dubois wrote:
> > > 
> > > > On Mon, 22 Nov 2010, demerphq wrote:
> > > > > On 22 November 2010 09:01, H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl>
> wrote:
> > > > > > On Sun, 21 Nov 2010 15:19:21 -0800, "Jerry D. Hedden" (via RT)
> > > > > > <perlbug-followup@perl.org> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > >> In order to save time building and testing Perl, I use the
> > > > > >> -Dnoextensions=... option in Configure to exclude over a
> > > > > >> dozen XS extensions when building Perl. These include
> > > > > >> extensions I don't need (e.g., Sys/Syslog), don't want
> > > > > >> (e.g., Text/Soundex) or that aren't supported on my current
> > > > > >> architecture (e.g., IPC/SysV).
> > > 
> > > > Not building all the extensions also helps with bisecting (even though
> > > > a Configure based mechanism alone won't help on Windows, which needs
> > > > help the most).
> > > 
> > > On balance, I'm in favor of this extension to an existing command-line 
> > > option.  For a variety of reasons, there are times when you definitely
> > > want Configure to hand you more rope.
> > > 
> > > Equally emphatically, however, I don't think any compensating
> changes to 
> > > the test suite are appropriate at this time.  If I deliberately exclude 
> > > an extension that "we" expect to be there, then I must live with the 
> > > consequences.  If I go out of my way to build a broken perl, I expect 
> > > the test suite to fail.
> > 
> > I'm in favour of this patch, as long as we don't modify the test suite
> > to accommodate broken builds.
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> A patch to permit exclusion of non-XS extensions was originally
> submitted by Jerry Hedden in Nov 2010.  Jesse Vincent was skeptical. 
> Others were more favorably inclined.  Both Andy Dougherty and Father C.
> spoke in favor provided we don't spend time modifying the test suite to
> accommodate such an exclusion.
> 
> I suspect that if we were to adopt this patch, the maintenance burden
> would fall on the Configure maintainers.  I also suspect that the patch
> is old enough that it wouldn't apply cleanly, though I haven't tested that.
> 
> Do we want to move forward with this?

Yes, I think that we should, but specifically as sprout states, that we
don't modify the test suite to (attempt to) compensate for user-disabled
modules.

I don't think that it will a significant ongoing burden on the Configure
maintainers to have this functionality in place. (Once it is added).

It would be a long term cost if we start to feel the need to add skip()s
in various test suites to ensure no tests failed for user-disabled
modules, because this has the potential to be a combinatorial explosion of
permutations, and a lot of manual work prone to errors.

Nicholas Clark

• [perl #79538] [PATCH] Add capability to exclude non-XS extensions by Father Chrysostomos via RT
• [perl #79538] [PATCH] Add capability to exclude non-XS extensions by James E Keenan via RT
• Re: [perl #79538] [PATCH] Add capability to exclude non-XS extensions by Nicholas Clark