Re: target-delegates.c needs some TLC [was Re: [OB PATCH] target.h (to_traceframe_info): Fix TARGET_DEFAULT_RETURN]

[Doug Evans <dje@google.com>]

On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 7:45 PM, Yao Qi <yao@codesourcery.com> wrote:
> On 03/06/2014 01:20 PM, Doug Evans wrote:
>> While I realize we don't want to require perl for building gdb (and I
>> for one would never advocate it), I wonder if we can do at least a bit
>> better.
>
> perl is required by git, and GDB source is version controlled by git.
> I assume that most of the host machine used for gdb development have
> git and perl installed.  People may get source from release, and
> generate patch on top of it (without git/perl installed).  It isn't
> common, is it?

Apologies for not being clear enough.
This is not, and never has been, an issue of needing perl installed per se.
The issue is whether we should impose on people the requirement of
some perl knowledge, however minimal, when one turns on
--enable-maintainer-mode.
If people decide to, fine by me.  But I was not prepared to do that
without a discussion.

> Anyway, we can check whether perl is installed.  If perl is installed,
> run make-target-delegates during make and error out if new-generated
> target-delegates.c is different from the one in gdb source.  Is it good?
> If yes, I'll submit a patch for this.

There is no need for this AFAICS.
Does AM_MAINTAINER_MODE do this for autoconf?
Maybe it does and I can't find it.
And if it doesn't do so for autoconf, why do it for perl?