[PATCH] Add PCRE support

[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

"Jos I. Boumans" <jos at dwim.org> writes:
> It indeed adds an external dependency, but I'm not quite understanding
> why you may think that's a bad thing.

Like I said: "it should be possible to compile [Varnish] with nothing
more than a C compiler and headers for a more or less POSIX-compatible C
library".

Don't assume everyone will use a precompiled Varnish package provided by
their distro.  In fact, assume the opposite: assume the average user is
running an LTS release for which there is no up-to-date Varnish package,
and it's two in the morning, and they need it up and running NOW.
Download, configure, make install.  An experienced Debian / Ubuntu admin
knows that he needs to apt-get install build-essential, but will not
enjoy seeing the build fail and having to read and understand compiler
messages and (hopefully) figure out that he also needs to apt-get
install libpcre-dev.  It's even worse on the BSDs, where prior to this
change you can build and install Varnish on a fresh stock install with
no other ports / packages installed.

This is why some of the tools won't be built if you don't have ncurses
(or to be precise the ncurses headers) installed.

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des at des.no