Re: Small PATCH: check of 2 Perl modules

On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 1:47 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 8:20 AM, Eugene Kazakov
> <e.kazakov@postgrespro.ru> wrote:
>> TAP-tests need two Perl modules: Test::More and IPC::Run.
>>
>> The patch adds checking of modules in configure.in and configure.
>
> Why would we want that?

I was doubtful at the beginning, but it doesn't hurt to have those
sanity checks in configure actually. The idea is that when
--enable-tap-tests is used now we simply error with "Can't locate
IPC/Run.pm in @INC" when kicking the tests, this check would allow one
to know if his environment is adapted to run the tests or not before
compiling anything.

And with this patch, we would fail now with that:
configure: error: Need Perl IPC::Run module

By the way, the patch given upthread by Eugene is incorrect. To begin
with, AX_PROG_PERL_MODULES has not been compiled by autoconf and I
can't believe that it is available on all platforms, for example on
OSX 10.8 I could not see it. And it is actually here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/ax_prog_perl_modules.html

I would recommend grabbing a copy of this file, and change the error
message as follows:
Perl module IPC::Run is required to run TAP tests

See the patch attached as reference, we could simplify the macro of
this m4 file and remove the check for perl, which is here:
+# Make sure we have perl
+if test -z "$PERL"; then
+AC_CHECK_PROG(PERL,perl,perl)
+fi
Though I kept the original script as-is in the patch attached.
Regards,
--
Michael