Replace the perl/Makefile.PL and the fallback perl/Makefile used under
NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER=NoThanks with a much simpler implementation heavily
inspired by how the i18n infrastructure's build process works[1].
The reason for having the Makefile.PL in the first place is that it
was initially[2] building a perl C binding to interface with libgit,
this functionality, that was removed[3] before Git.pm ever made it to
the master branch.
We've since since started maintaining a fallback perl/Makefile, as
MakeMaker wouldn't work on some platforms[4]. That's just the tip of
the iceberg. We have the PM.stamp hack in the top-level Makefile[5] to
detect whether we need to regenerate the perl/perl.mak, which I fixed
just recently to deal with issues like the perl version changing from
under us[6].
There is absolutely no reason for why this needs to be so complex
anymore. All we're getting out of this elaborate Rube Goldberg machine
was copying perl/* to perl/blib/* as we do a string-replacement on
the *.pm files to hardcode @@LOCALEDIR@@ in the source, as well as
pod2man-ing Git.pm & friends.
So replace the whole thing with something that's pretty much a copy of
how we generate po/build/**.mo from po/*.po, just with a small sed(1)
command instead of msgfmt. As that's being done rename the files
from *.pm to *.pmc just to indicate that they're generated (see
"perldoc -f require").
While I'm at it, change the fallback for Error.pm from being something
where we'll ship our own Error.pm if one doesn't exist at build time
to one where we just use a Git::Error wrapper that'll always prefer
the system-wide Error.pm, only falling back to our own copy if it
really doesn't exist at runtime. It's now shipped as
Git::FromCPAN::Error, making it easy to add other modules to
Git::FromCPAN::* in the future if that's needed.
Functional changes:
* This will not always install into perl's idea of its global
"installsitelib". This only potentially matters for packagers that
need to expose Git.pm for non-git use, and as explained in the
INSTALL file there's a trivial workaround.
* The scripts themselves will 'use lib' the target directory, but if
INSTLIBDIR is set it overrides it. It doesn't have to be this way,
it could be set in addition to INSTLIBDIR, but my reading of [7] is
that this is the desired behavior.
* We don't build man pages for all of the perl modules as we used to,
only Git(3pm). As discussed on-list[8] that we were building
installed manpages for purely internal APIs like Git::I18N or
private-Error.pm was always a bug anyway, and all the Git::SVN::*
ones say they're internal APIs.
There are apparently external users of Git.pm, but I don't expect
there to be any of the others.
As a side-effect of these general changes the perl documentation
now only installed by install-{doc,man}, not a mere "install" as
before.
1. 5e9637c629 ("i18n: add infrastructure for translating Git with
gettext", 2011-11-18)
2. b1edc53d06 ("Introduce Git.pm (v4)", 2006-06-24)
3. 18b0fc1ce1 ("Git.pm: Kill Git.xs for now", 2006-09-23)
4. f848718a69 ("Make perl/ build procedure ActiveState friendly.",
2006-12-04)
5. ee9be06770 ("perl: detect new files in MakeMaker builds",
2012-07-27)
6. c59c4939c2 ("perl: regenerate perl.mak if perl -V changes",
2017-03-29)
7. 0386dd37b1 ("Makefile: add PERLLIB_EXTRA variable that adds to
default perl path", 2013-11-15)
8. 87bmjjv1pu.fsf@evledraar.booking.com ("Re: [PATCH] Makefile:
replace perl/Makefile.PL with simple make rules"
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Contributed Software Although these pieces are available as part of the official git source tree, they are in somewhat different status. The intention is to keep interesting tools around git here, maybe even experimental ones, to give users an easier access to them, and to give tools wider exposure, so that they can be improved faster. I am not expecting to touch these myself that much. As far as my day-to-day operation is concerned, these subdirectories are owned by their respective primary authors. I am willing to help if users of these components and the contrib/ subtree "owners" have technical/design issues to resolve, but the initiative to fix and/or enhance things _must_ be on the side of the subtree owners. IOW, I won't be actively looking for bugs and rooms for enhancements in them as the git maintainer -- I may only do so just as one of the users when I want to scratch my own itch. If you have patches to things in contrib/ area, the patch should be first sent to the primary author, and then the primary author should ack and forward it to me (git pull request is nicer). This is the same way as how I have been treating gitk, and to a lesser degree various foreign SCM interfaces, so you know the drill. I expect that things that start their life in the contrib/ area to graduate out of contrib/ once they mature, either by becoming projects on their own, or moving to the toplevel directory. On the other hand, I expect I'll be proposing removal of disused and inactive ones from time to time. If you have new things to add to this area, please first propose it on the git mailing list, and after a list discussion proves there are some general interests (it does not have to be a list-wide consensus for a tool targeted to a relatively narrow audience -- for example I do not work with projects whose upstream is svn, so I have no use for git-svn myself, but it is of general interest for people who need to interoperate with SVN repositories in a way git-svn works better than git-svnimport), submit a patch to create a subdirectory of contrib/ and put your stuff there. -jc