--- a/lisp/ChangeLog	Sat Jan 03 15:24:14 2009 +0000
+++ b/lisp/ChangeLog	Sat Jan 03 15:41:34 2009 +0000
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2009-01-01  Stephen J. Turnbull  <stephen@xemacs.org>
+
+	* descr-text.el (describe-char-unicodedata-file):
+	Nuke build-breaking computation from defcustom initializer.
+
 2008-12-30  Aidan Kehoe  <kehoea@parhasard.net>
 
 	* make-docfile.el: 

--- a/lisp/descr-text.el	Sat Jan 03 15:24:14 2009 +0000
+++ b/lisp/descr-text.el	Sat Jan 03 15:41:34 2009 +0000
@@ -207,40 +207,18 @@
 	(insert "There are text properties here:\n")
 	(describe-property-list properties)))))
 
-(defcustom describe-char-unicodedata-file
-  ;; XEmacs change; initialise this by default, using Perl. 
-  (let ((have-perl
-         (member-if 
-          #'(lambda (path) 
-              (file-exists-p (format "%s%cperl" path directory-sep-char))) 
-          exec-path)) 
-        installprivlib res)
-    (when have-perl 
-      (setq installprivlib  
-            (with-string-as-buffer-contents ""
-              (shell-command "perl -V:installprivlib" t) 
-              ;; 1+ because buffer offsets start at one. 
-              (delete-region 1 (1+ (length "installprivlib='"))) 
-              ;; Delete the final newline, semicolon and quotation mark. 
-              (delete-region (- (point-max) 3) (point-max)))) 
-      (cond 
-       ((file-exists-p 
-         (setq res
-               (format "%s%cunicore%cUnicodeData.txt" 
-                       installprivlib directory-sep-char directory-sep-char)))) 
-       ((file-exists-p 
-         (setq res
-               (format "%s%cunicode%cUnicodeData.txt" 
-                       installprivlib directory-sep-char directory-sep-char)))))
-      res))
+;; XEmacs change
+(defcustom describe-char-unicodedata-file nil
   "Location of Unicode data file.
 This is the UnicodeData.txt file from the Unicode Consortium, used for
 diagnostics.  If it is non-nil `describe-char' will print data
 looked up from it.  This facility is mostly of use to people doing
 multilingual development.
 
-This is a fairly large file, typically installed with Perl.
-At the time of writing it is at the URL
+This is a fairly large file, installed on many systems by Perl, in the
+`unicore' subdirectory of the Perl library tree \(\"perl -V:installprivlib\"
+will tell you where that is.)  You can also get the current version from the
+Unicode Consortium at the URL
 `http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeData.txt'.
 
 It is possible to build a DBM or Berkeley index cache for this file, so that