Re: [bug-gawk] Description of the option --disable-extensions

[М]

Thank you for the clear answer! That description in the manual is really 
strange.
I hope that after updating the manual no one will fall into such doubts.

As to your question, well, sometimes one need test different configurations due 
to information security policies. :-)
Of course, it is likely that the final system will have shared library support.
In my opinion, an opportunity to turn off such APIs should be.
And it's great that gawk's ./configure provides it!

_______________

Yours respectfully,
Mark Krauze

02.05.2019, 15:32, "address@hidden" <address@hidden>:
> Hi.
>
> Thanks for the report.
>
> The manual is incomplete. This option disables the whole dynamic
> loading mechanism, as well as skipping the building of the extensions.
>
> I will update the manual.
>
> And out of curiousity, what kind of system are you on that doesn't have
> shared library support?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Arnold
>
> ?? <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>>  For some reason I have to compile GNU AWK with a completely disabled API 
>> for extensions.
>>  When analysing the ./configure help, I supposed that the option 
>> --disable-extensions was what I'd been looking for.
>>
>>  $ sh ./configure --help
>>  `configure' configures GNU Awk 5.0.0 to adapt to many kinds of systems.
>>  ...
>>  --disable-extensions?? ?? disable dynamic extensions (default is detect)
>>  ...
>>
>>  Such an option is quite common, with a usual behavior.
>>  And I was glad to notice that the string "API: 2.0" disappeared from the 
>> --version output:
>>
>>  $ sh ./configure --disable-extensions --prefix=/path/to/
>>  ...
>>  $ make
>>  ...
>>  $ make install
>>  ...
>>  $ /path/to/bin/gawk --version
>>  GNU Awk 5.0.0 (GNU MPFR 4.0.1, GNU MP 6.1.2)
>>  Copyright (C) 1989, 1991-2019 Free Software Foundation.
>>  ...
>>
>>  But I fell into doubts after reading the corresponding description in the 
>> manual:
>>
>>  B.2.3 Additional Configuration Options
>>  ...
>>  --disable-extensions
>>  Disable configuring and building the sample extensions in the extension 
>> direc-
>>  tory. This is useful for cross-compiling. The default action is to 
>> dynamically
>>  check if the extensions can be configured and compiled.
>>  ...
>>
>>  That is, it states that this option refers only to the sample extensions 
>> provided with the GNU AWK distribution.
>>  Nothing about user extensions, which can be compiled (and used?) after that.
>>
>>  If the option --disable-extensions is passed to ./configure, will the final 
>> interpreter raise an error
>>  when a user tries to load some extensions in a script? What is the proper 
>> behavior?
>>  Or this description in the manual is ambiguous/incorrect?
>>
>>  _______________
>>
>>  Yours respectfully,
>>  Mark Krauze