Re: Texinfo 7.0.90 pretest on CentOS 8-stream (Unicode::Collate)

[Gavin Smith]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 12:38:38AM +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> > Then the right thing is a configure test, that aborts the configuration
> > with a message like "Your perl installations lacks the Unicode::Collate 
> > module.
> > If you are on a Red Hat distribution, try installing the 
> > perl-Unicode-Collate
> > package."
> 
> I do not think that we should say something like that (if we did, we
> should propose to install the perl package actually).

Yes and we shouldn't give instructions for all the different distributions.

> I propose the attached patch.

This would resolve the issue simply.

Were the Encode and Data::Dumper modules in a similar situation in that
they were not provided by some distributions in some perl configuarations?

(In fact, this ChangeLog entry records the history:)

2019-01-05  Gavin Smith  <gavinsmith0123@gmail.com>

        Check for Data::Dumper.

        * configure.ac: Check for Data::Dumper as well as Encode.  Bruno 
        Haible reported that Data::Dumper was missing on CentOS 7.3.

(Mailing list link:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2019-01/msg00031.html
I'd forgotten about this completely.  I haven't looked into the situation
with Encode.)

I've started investigating whether texi2any could provide a stub implementation
of the Unicode::Collate interface for use if Unicode::Collate is not available,
using simply the builtin Perl cmp operator for sorting.  (As a reminder for
anybody reading this discussion, this affects the sorting of document indices,
and may be significant for documents written in languages other than English,
but wouldn't make a noticeable difference in most cases.)  This would help
keep the dependencies of Texinfo small.

I doubt that Data::Dumper is used much, mainly for the test suite, and
texi2any could probably be made to run without it with no loss of
functionality -- I'd have to investigate this too.


> diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
> index 1c7f337400..e996ced210 100644
> --- a/configure.ac
> +++ b/configure.ac
> @@ -61,14 +61,14 @@ AC_ARG_VAR([PERL_EXT_LDFLAGS], [Linker flags for a Perl 
> extension])
>  AC_ARG_VAR([PERL_EXT_CC], [Compiler for a Perl extension])
>  
>  AC_MSG_CHECKING([Perl version and modules])
> -if $PERL -e "use 5.008_001; use Encode; use Data::Dumper" >/dev/null 2>&1; 
> then
> +if $PERL -e "use 5.008_001; use Encode; use Data::Dumper; use 
> Unicode::Collate" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
>    perl_version_requirement='yes'
>  else
>    perl_version_requirement='no'
>  fi
>  AC_MSG_RESULT($perl_version_requirement)
>  if test z"$perl_version_requirement" = 'zno' ; then
> -  AC_MSG_ERROR([perl >= 5.8.1 with Encode and Data::Dumper required by 
> Texinfo.])
> +  AC_MSG_ERROR([perl >= 5.8.1 with Encode, Data::Dumper and Unicode::Collate 
> required by Texinfo.])
>  fi
>  
>