Re: Windows perl/tcl requirement documentation

On Mon, Jul 01, 2024 at 11:27:26AM -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> Our docs currently state this regarding the perl requirement for building on
> Windows:
>
>
> ActiveState Perl
>
> ActiveState Perl is required to run the build generation scripts.
> MinGW or Cygwin Perl will not work. It must also be present in the
> PATH. Binaries can be downloaded from https://www.activestate.com
> <https://www.activestate.com> (Note: version 5.14 or later is
> required, the free Standard Distribution is sufficient).
>
>
> This really hasn't been a true requirement for quite some time. I stopped
> using AS perl quite a few years ago due to possible licensing issues, and
> have been building with MSVC using Strawberry Perl ever since. Andres
> recently complained that Strawberry was somewhat out of date, but that's no
> longer really the case - it's on 5.38.2, which is the latest in that series,
> and perl 5.40.0 was only releases a few weeks ago.

This is an area where I have proposed a set of changes in the last
commit fest of March, but it led nowehere as, at least it seems to me,
there was no strong consensus about what to mention as main
references:
https://commitfest.postgresql.org/47/4745/
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/ZZEGb7NQbkZm0VtO(at)paquier(dot)xyz

Not everything should be gone, but I was wondering back on this thread
if it would make most sense to replace all these references to point
to the popular packaging systems used in the buildfarm.

> We recommend AS Tcl/Tk, which I have not used, but which I am wary of for
> the same reasons. There is a BSD licensed up to date windows binary
> installation called Magicsplat which I haven't tried but which might well be
> suitable for our purposes.

Interesting.

> I suggest we remove these references to AS and replace them with references
> to Windows distros that are more appropriate.

Agreed.
--
Michael