Re: Git and PCRE2 vs PCRE?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mar 30, 2017, 21:22 UTC
Message-ID: <20170330212206.42mv7rvwzvakenr3@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAH8yC8kOeuVjvoeg0WsSfDeakJh_es2xhYK_O_bM87DEBVcB1w@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 04:59:27PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Configure has an option for libpcre, but its not clear to me how to
> fine tune it for libpcre2:
> 
> $ ./configure --help | /usr/gnu/bin/grep -A 2 -i pcre
>   --with-libpcre          support Perl-compatible regexes (default is NO)
>                           ARG can be also prefix for libpcre library and
>                           headers
> 
> Is it possible to use PCRE2 with Git? If so, how do I tell Git to use PCRE2?

No, I don't think so. According to the release announcement for pcre2, the API is not compatible with the original:

  https://lists.exim.org/lurker/message/20150105.162835.0666407a.en.html

So even if you could tweak the build to use it, it would not do the right thing. Somebody would have to add code for the new library, and probably have a USE_LIBPCRE2 flag.

I don't know offhand if there are compelling reasons to do that work.

-Peff