Python required?

[Dan Nicholson]

On 4/13/07, Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-04-13 at 08:05 -0700, Dan Nicholson wrote:
> > Currently, HAL's configure will bomb if Python isn't installed. From
> > what I can tell, though, Python is only used in the device-manager,
> > which is certainly optional. It seems to my eyes that the reason for
> > the failure is because the autoconf macro AM_PATH_PYTHON will error if
> > it doesn't find Python.
> >
> > Is Python anywhere else in HAL? I realize everyone has Python on their
> > system, but it'd be nice to avoid an unnecessary dependency. It seems
> > that this would probably require that AM_PATH_PYTHON not be used, but
> > first I'd like to hear that Python is or isn't needed.
>
> The only bits that need it are:
>
> examples/interface-locking-test.py
> examples/locking.py
> examples/light_sensors_and_keyboard_backlight.py
>
> And
>
> tools/lshal.py (which isn't installed).
>
> In my opinion we should drop completely python from configure, now
> nothing actually needs it.

I certainly agree with that. Anyone who needs to run those tools or
examples will understand they need Python and where it is on their
system.

The situation I was really concerned with was the 0.5.9 branch, where
the device-manager is still there. It'd be nice to not have configure
bomb if I don't have Python even if I'm suppressing the
tools/device-manager directory. I have an idea about creating a
tweaked python AC macro, but I'm not sure that it would be accepted
here.

Could you confirm that in 0.5.9, the only things using Python are the
tools mentioned above and the device-manager?

--
Dan