FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT schemamania.org>]

<Frediano.Ziglio AT vodafone.com> wrote:
> > 
> > If we start including Perl code in the
> > distribution, sooner or later we'll either accidentally 
> > require Perl, or someone will think we do.  
> 
> The key is
> 
> num_limits.h: numeric.pl Makefile
> 
> You say: if num_limits.h is former than Makefile or numeric.pl rebuild
> num_limits.h... I think that Makefile is an error. 

Agreed.  

> removing Makefile
> 
> num_limits.h: numeric.pl
> 
> Now if num_limits.h is former than numeric.pl make rebuild num_limits.h.
> However you do not distribute numeric.pl and user get the error I
> reported (make: *** No rule to make target `numeric.pl', needed by
> `num_limits.h'.). So there are only two solutions:
> 1- remove dependency from num_limits.h to numeric.pl
> 2- include numeric.pl in distribution
> ...
> However
> there are some trick we can use with 1:
...
> - comment out num_limits.h rule if perl is not detected in configure
> (still used for documentation in root Makefile.am)

Your last option leads to another that is much better IMHO: let configure
determine if numeric.pl exists.  For CVS, yes, for distribution, no. 
src/tds/Makefile.am then gets something like:

        if HAVE_NUMERIC_DOT_PL
        num_limits.h: numeric.pl Makefile
                perl $(srcdir)/numeric.pl > .$@ 
                mv .$@ $@
        endif

I don't have time to play with that right now, but I'll look at it later. 
Thanks for your thoughts, Freddy.  You helped clarify the situtation for
me.  

Regards, 

--jkl