Base 64-bit Cygwin now requires Perl?

[Douglas Coup]

Objective Systems, Inc.
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On 6/18/2014 4:14 PM, Chris J. Breisch wrote:
> Steven Penny wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 12:17 PM, Steven Penny wrote:
>>> Because of this dependency line
>>
>> This issue is back again, now with
>>
>> man-db
>>    lynx
>>      perl
>>
>> OP
>> http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2013-08/msg00152.html
>>
>
> Yes, this is true, and my guess is that it will remain so.
>
> man-db depends on lynx, and that's not a dependency that is easily 
> removed, even if I was inclined to try, which I'm not. It needs some 
> sort of WWW browser. I don't think that can be disabled. It's not a 
> configure option to do so, so it'd have to be handled through Cygwin 
> specific patches to the source. I haven't looked into how difficult 
> that would be yet. Perhaps it's not all that difficult. I'll take a 
> glance when I get home.
>
> While the browser doesn't have to be lynx, that's probably the 
> simplest one.
>
> lynx depends on perl. I'm not 100% sure this is a valid dependency. I 
> don't notice that as a dependency on other systems. I think it comes 
> from the fact that there's a sample perl script included in the 
> installation. This is just sample code, and is merely to demonstrate 
> using a perl script with lynx as a CGI. If Im correct and this is the 
> reason for this dependency (I don't see anything else), it could 
> likely be removed. I'm not the Cygwin project manager or the lynx 
> maintainer, however, and such a decision would have to be left to them.
>
> However, I wonder if the answer here isn't just to move perl into 
> base. perl scripts are used everywhere, even in startup/shutdown 
> scripts on some Unix systems. I think most people at this point expect 
> a Unix environment to have perl.
Just for my two cents, does "move perl into base" mean that a Cygwin 
install would always install Cygwin's perl and would not allow perl to 
be skipped?  I'm asking because we use ActiveState perl; we've had 
problems trying to run some of our scripts using Cygwin's perl. Every 
time a Cygwin install tries to bring in Cygwin's perl, we either have to 
mark it to be skipped or let it install and then run setup again to 
de-install it.
>
> So, yes, there are options to remove this dependency. The lynx one 
> seems to me to be the easiest, but I could be wrong. As I said, I can 
> take a look into seeing how difficult it would be to create a Cygwin 
> specific version of mandb without browser capabilities. I'm not 
> convinced it's worth crippling mandb just to remove this dependency, 
> however.
>
> Finally, I'm not sure that removing this dependency is worthwhile, 
> regardless, but that's not my call.
>


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