Re: RFC: mawk (not maintainer, updated package)
Dear Charles,
Charles Plessy wrote:
> Le Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 12:04:17AM -0600, Jonathan Nieder a écrit :
>> My motivation was that the Linux kernel source started requiring an
>> awk that can understand [[:lower:]]. I imagine others will start
>> running into the same thing sooner or later: mawk 1.3.3 does not
>> support POSIX regular expressions very well, making it a poor default
>> awk. The updated version is far better in that respect.
> I think that for packages of priority higher than optional, it is much safer to
> discuss their situation on -devel and decide what action to take there instead
> of proposing an NMU on -mentors. These packages are installed on most Debian
> systems, so uncoordinated uploads can be very disruptive.
This is a very good point. I should have at least set the
distribution of the demonstration package to experimental. Anyway, I
would like to wait a little for the maintainer to look at it, because
in a case like this (upgrading to a new upstream version with no
obvious backward incompatibilities), it should not be necessary to ask
others to help make a decision.
I decided to ask about the package on -mentors for two reasons, only
one of which I articulated clearly. One reason was to learn how to
make sure something gets done; you have suggested a very reasonable
answer here (discuss the situation on -devel). The other reason was to
get feedback on the changes I made.
If anyone wants to look, probably the easiest way is to look over the
changes in git. [1] The main change is in the single commit b209e5a8
(Switch to Thomas Dickey’s new upstream version) [2]. Everything
since then is about making the build a little more comfortable: clean
up debian/rules, address warnings from gcc, allow build with byacc
instead of bison as yacc. Thoughts on any of those things, especially
the debian/rules, would be welcome.
> In the case of the problem you mentionned above, maybe it can be solved by
> using another awk alternative?
gawk works.
original-awk might be worth considering as awk for the base system.
Will follow-up on -devel tomorrow.
Both original-awk and the updated mawk deal even worse with Linux than
the mawk 1.3.3. (One can test with
awk -f arch/x86/tools/gen-insn-attr-x86.awk arch/x86/lib/x86-opcode-map.txt
with a mainline kernel.) mawk 1.3.3 runs afoul of the sanity check in
check_awk_implement(), producing a "Please try to use gawk." error.
original-awk and recent mawk use a different iteration order than gawk
for
for (i in opnd)
in convert_operands, which makes the function trip up on input line 240:
c8: ENTER Iw,Ib
because they produce the Iw operand before Ib. Looks like this script
has only been tested with gawk. :-)
> Anyway, thank you for the care you have for core packages. Please do not
> be shy, and discuss them on a core mailign list :)
Thanks. The more I think about it, the better advice this seems.
Good night,
Jonathan
[1] git.debian.org:/git/collab-maint/mawk.git
[2] http://git.debian.org/?p=collab-maint/mawk.git;a=commit;h=b209e5a
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