The Borland Chainsaw Massacre

Remove support for the Borland C++ compiler on Win32, as agreed here:
http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2011-09/msg00034.html

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 45 deletions

diff --git a/README.win32 b/README.win32
index 106d6990cb..f7549ae771 100644
--- a/README.win32
+++ b/README.win32
@@ -39,7 +39,6 @@ additional software to run (other than what came with your operating
 system).  Currently, this port is capable of using one of the
 following compilers on the Intel x86 architecture:
 
-      Borland C++             version 5.02 or later
       Microsoft Visual C++    version 6.0 or later
       Gcc by mingw.org        gcc version 3.2 or later
       Gcc by mingw-w64.sf.net gcc version 4.4.3 or later
@@ -62,14 +61,11 @@ that are also supported by perl's makefile.
 
 =back
 
-The Borland C++ and Microsoft Visual C++ compilers are also now being given
-away free.  The Borland compiler is available as "Borland C++ Compiler Free
-Command Line Tools" and is the same compiler that ships with the full
-"Borland C++ Builder" product.  The Microsoft compiler is available as
-"Visual C++ Toolkit 2003" or "Visual C++ 2005/2008/2010 Express Edition" (and
-also as part of the ".NET Framework SDK") and is the same compiler that ships
-with "Visual C++ .NET 2003 Professional" or "Visual C++ 2005/2008/2010
-Professional" respectively.
+The Microsoft Visual C++ compilers are also now being given away free. They are
+available as "Visual C++ Toolkit 2003" or "Visual C++ 2005/2008/2010 Express
+Edition" (and also as part of the ".NET Framework SDK") and are the same
+compilers that ship with "Visual C++ .NET 2003 Professional" or "Visual C++
+2005/2008/2010 Professional" respectively.
 
 This port can also be built on IA64/AMD64 using:
 
@@ -100,7 +96,7 @@ See L<Usage Hints for Perl on Windows> below for general hints about this.
 
 You need a "make" program to build the sources.  If you are using
 Visual C++ or the Windows SDK tools, nmake will work.  Builds using
-the Borland compiler or gcc need dmake.
+the gcc need dmake.
 
 dmake is a freely available make that has very nice macro features
 and parallelability.
@@ -111,16 +107,6 @@ L<http://search.cpan.org/dist/dmake/>
 
 Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path.
 
-There exists a minor coexistence problem with dmake and Borland C++
-compilers.  Namely, if a distribution has C files named with mixed
-case letters, they will be compiled into appropriate .obj-files named
-with all lowercase letters, and every time dmake is invoked
-to bring files up to date, it will try to recompile such files again.
-For example, Tk distribution has a lot of such files, resulting in
-needless recompiles every time dmake is invoked.  To avoid this, you
-may use the script "sync_ext.pl" after a successful build.  It is
-available in the win32 subdirectory of the Perl source distribution.
-
 =item Command Shell
 
 Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with Windows.  Some versions of the
@@ -131,14 +117,6 @@ shell.
 Make sure the path to the build directory does not contain spaces.  The
 build usually works in this circumstance, but some tests will fail.
 
-=item Borland C++
-
-If you are using the Borland compiler, you will need dmake.
-(The make that Borland supplies is seriously crippled and will not
-work for MakeMaker builds.)
-
-See L</"Make"> above.
-
 =item Microsoft Visual C++
 
 The nmake that comes with Visual C++ will suffice for building.
@@ -409,20 +387,6 @@ spaces.  So don't do that.
 If you are running the tests from a emacs shell window, you may see
 failures in op/stat.t.  Run "dmake test-notty" in that case.
 
-If you're using the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in op/taint.t
-arising from the inability to find the Borland Runtime DLLs on the system
-default path.  You will need to copy the DLLs reported by the messages
-from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows system directory
-(usually somewhere like C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32) and rerun the test.
-
-If you're using Borland compiler versions 5.2 and below, you may run into
-problems finding the correct header files when building extensions.  For
-example, building the "Tk" extension may fail because both perl and Tk
-contain a header file called "patchlevel.h".  The latest Borland compiler
-(v5.5) is free of this misbehaviour, and it even supports an
-option -VI- for backward (bugward) compatibility for using the old Borland
-search algorithm  to locate header files.
-
 If you run the tests on a FAT partition, you may see some failures for
 C<link()> related tests (I<op/write.t>, I<op/stat.t> ...). Testing on
 NTFS avoids these errors.
@@ -913,8 +877,6 @@ and borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available
 at the time.  Various people have made numerous and sundry hacks
 since then.
 
-Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
-
 GCC/mingw32 support was added in 5.005 (Nick Ing-Simmons).
 
 Support for PERL_OBJECT was added in 5.005 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
@@ -925,6 +887,6 @@ Win9x support was added in 5.6 (Benjamin Stuhl).
 
 Support for 64-bit Windows added in 5.8 (ActiveState Corp).
 
-Last updated: 18 November 2010
+Last updated: 10 September 2011
 
 =cut