Re: problems with node Utilities in Makefiles

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Karl Berry wrote on Sat, Sep 01, 2007 at 12:00:34AM CEST:
> awk is one issue -- the argument (as I understand it) is that it is
> needed to make autoconf configure scripts more efficient,

Yes, exactly: it allows config.status to operate with lower work
complexity (more efficiently) given many substituted values; for
large packages this can have substantial impact on configure time.

> and it adds no extra bootstrap burden in practice.

That's what we think: we tried any awk we could find; current gawk is
very portable and cross compilable (and there's no reason why that
should change).

> (Right, Ralf?  Anything else I should mention to rms.)

Well, the fact that old (Solaris) awk will do for Autoconf might help.

> But bzip2 is another matter.  I don't see the need for it in *building
> and installation*, which is what that list is about.  dist-bzip2 is
> neither building nor installation, so there are no particular
> restrictions on what can be run in that Makefile target.  So what's the
> problem?

I don't either think that bzip2 is needed here.  The GCS isn't explicit
in that 'make dist' shouldn't invoke any other tools (many packages do!)
than those listed there, AFAICS.

Cheers,
Ralf