Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760050AbZACXEO (ORCPT ); Sat, 3 Jan 2009 18:04:14 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1760460AbZACXDy (ORCPT ); Sat, 3 Jan 2009 18:03:54 -0500 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:57276 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932749AbZACXDx (ORCPT ); Sat, 3 Jan 2009 18:03:53 -0500 Message-ID: <495FEEAF.5020005@zytor.com> Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:03:11 -0800 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (X11/20080501) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Leon Woestenberg CC: Rob Landley , Embedded Linux mailing list , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton , Sam Ravnborg Subject: Re: PATCH [0/3]: Simplify the kernel build by removing perl. References: <200901020207.30359.rob@landley.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1809 Lines: 45 Leon Woestenberg wrote: > > I agree with Rob that the amount of required dependencies should be > kept to a minimum. > > If we only use 0.5% of a certain language (or: dependent package), > then rather implement that 0.5% in the existing language. > > Dependencies very quickly become dependency hell. If A requires B, > then A also inherits all (future) requirements of B, etc. etc. > > In my daily software development work with Linux and GNU software in > general, 10% of it is spent fighting/removing these extremely "thin" > or false depencies, so that it is usuable in embedded devices. > First of all, I largely consider this a joke. All real-life embedded kernel builds take place on hosted platforms; anything else seems to be done "just because it can be done", as a kind of show-off art project. Cute, but hardly worth impeding the rest of the kernel community for. We're not talking about general platform dependencies here, but build dependencies for the kernel. A platform that can build the kernel is not a small platform. Second of all, these patches are not fullworthy replacements. The original patch using bc had less dependencies, but bc failed on some platforms, mysteriously. The new patches have *more* environmental dependencies than that ever did. Third, if someone actually cares to do it right, I have a smallish bignum library at http://git.zytor.com/?p=lib/pbn.git;a=summary that might be a starting point. -hpa -- H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center I work for Intel. I don't speak on their behalf. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/