> Is Porting/makerel run as part of the perl\@\d{4}.tgz kit assembly?

No.

> Should it (or whatever script is run) be updated to run perl embed.pl
> and/or perhaps run:
>
> touch proto.h global.sym embed.h embedvar.h objXSUB.h perlapi.c perlapi.h
pod/perlapi.pod pod/perlintern.pod
>
> before assembling the kits? I found that I could get a cleaner build
> by running the above by hand after running:

I updated now the whatever script to do hopefully the moral equivalent
of the above.

> P.S. Here is an UNTESTED purely optional patch that I think backports
> embed.pl to be almost OK under perl 5.003_05, with the exception of the

Well, the patch wouldn't hurt, just in case a pumpkin happens to have
an old perl in their path (has happened to me a couple of times, ahem).

> $function->(@args) construct still at line 52, (proper testing would look
> at generated proto.h, et alia but I have run out of time for today). You
> might not want to apply this since ideally the kit would not run `perl
> embed.pl` after untarring hence running under older versions of perl
> ought to be allowed to fail:
>
> --- perl_11238/embed.pl Mon Jul 9 07:09:49 2001
> +++ perl/embed.pl Tue Jul 10 19:27:34 2001
> @@ -251,7 +251,8 @@
> readvars %thread, 'thrdvar.h','T';
> readvars %globvar, 'perlvars.h','G';
>
> -foreach my $sym (sort keys %thread) {
> +my $sym;
> +foreach $sym (sort keys %thread) {
> warn "$sym in intrpvar.h as well as thrdvar.h\n" if exists $intrp{$sym};
> }
>
> @@ -856,15 +857,15 @@
>
> EOT
>
> -foreach my $sym (sort keys %intrp) {
> +foreach $sym (sort keys %intrp) {
> print CAPIH bincompat_var('I',$sym);
> }
>
> -foreach my $sym (sort keys %thread) {
> +foreach $sym (sort keys %thread) {
> print CAPIH bincompat_var('T',$sym);
> }
>
> -foreach my $sym (sort keys %globvar) {
> +foreach $sym (sort keys %globvar) {
> print CAPIH bincompat_var('G',$sym);
> }
>
> @@ -985,7 +986,7 @@
> if (length $return) {
> $decl .= " $rettype retval;\n";
> $retarg .= "retval = ";
> - $return = "\n ${return}retval;\n";
> + $return = "\n " . $return . "retval;\n";
> }
> $emitval .= <<EOT
> $rettype
> @@ -1011,7 +1012,6 @@
> }
>
> # XXXX temporary hack
> -my $sym;
> for $sym (qw(
> perl_construct
> perl_destruct
> End of tweak.
>

--
$jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/
# There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
# It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen