Craig Berry wrote: !Does anyone know why it's done that way? Our version keeps getting !out of synch with the MM_Unix version that all other platforms use, !and it would be much more maintainable if we could get rid of the !override. I also notice that continuation lines are scrupulously !avoided in [.vms]descrip_mms.template; is there any good reason for !that?
That is certainly a pain. I suspect (although I do not actually know) that the assignment of the macros was done that way to avoid an allocation limit of some sort (along the lines of the 255 limit for DCL lines passed into lib$spawn()). Admittedly macros are data structures internal to the build tool and their assignment /concatenation build up statements should not have to worry about DCL limits (they are not action lines after all). Perhaps there was an old version of MMS that needed such spoon feeding? I suspect that Charles Bailey might remember why it was done that way. Isn't it the case that you always use MMK? As to possible solutions: why not have the perldepend portion of MM_$platform.pm built up from a .PL extractraction by miniperl at perl build time? I suspect the only tricky bit would be the maintenance of ExtUtils::MakeMaker outside of the perl source build process. But at least the headache of header listings would be lessened. Another far wimpier approach would be to simply leave comments inside of Makefile.SH and MM_Unix.pm to "Be sure to also modify vms/descrip_mms.template" and "Be sure to also modify MM_VMS.pm if you need to add or change header files listed here. Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to ask for help." respectively. Peter Prymmer
