Re: HP-UX issues (WAS: Re: [RFC] Git User's Survey 2008)

From: Miklos Vajna <vmiklos@frugalware.org>
Date: Jul 23, 2008, 23:45 UTC
Message-ID: <20080723234534.GO32057@genesis.frugalware.org>
In-Reply-To: <200807232338.04340.jnareb@gmail.com>

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 11:38:00PM +0200, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> > 2) Have coreutils installed. (But then I think it would be good to list
> > this dependency in INSTALL.)
> 
> It would be good idea, although "POSIX-compliant shells" implies
> coreutils somewhat; shell scripts usually do require some utilities,
> like sed, grep, cat, test etc.

Sure, but we already use test_cmp instead of diff -u, avoid grep -a, etc. These tricks are for running without GNU coreutils, I guess.

Show 10 quoted lines

> > 3) Patch git to use automake's install-sh. (Would such a patch be ever
> > accepted?)
> 
> I think it would.  It would allow us also to uncomment the
> AC_PROG_INSTALL line in configure.ac file to find 'install'
> automatically (autoconf requires having install.sh or install-sh
> fallback in the sources).
> 
> The problem is coming up with minimal yet portable (at least as
> portable as git itself) fallback install.sh script.

I just checked automake-1.10.1's install-sh script, it works properly with HP-UX's ksh.

I think it would be possible to:

1) Just use it: in long-term this would mean no additional maintenance
cost, since if any problem occurs, it could be just updated from
automake.

2) Or make it as minimal as possible: As far as I see the current git
build system just uses the -d and -m switches, so the support for the
-c, -C, -g, -o, -s, -t and -T switches could be removed. This way we
would get a minimal install-sh, but then it would have to be maintained
inside git.git.

I think 1) would be better.