[Mesa-dev] [RFC libdrm 0/2] Replace the build system with meson

[Rob Clark]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 9:55 AM, Emil Velikov <emil.l.velikov at gmail.com> wrote:
> Seems like we ended up all over the place, so let me try afresh.
>
> Above all:
>  - Saying "I don't care" about your users is arrogant - let us _not_
> do that, please ?
> Even Linux distribution maintainers have responded that "upstream does
> not care us", which is indicative that we should be more careful what
> we say.
>
> For the rest - we're dealing with two orthogonal issues here:
>
> * Multiple build systems
> I believe we'll all agree that I might be the person who's been in all
> the build systems the most.
> Yes I _would_ _love_ to drop it all but we simply _cannot_ do that yet:
>  - [currently] there is no viable solution for Android
>  - dropping the Autotools will lead to OpenBSD and NetBSD having to
> write one from scratch, IIRC Solaris/FreeBSD and others are in similar
> boat.
> These projects have been getting closer to upstream and "forcing" the
> extra obstacle is effectively giving them the middle finger.

my $0.02.. I like autotools mostly because I've dealt with it long
enough to know how to debug when things go wrong, and I dislike
learning new build systems.

That said, a lot of other big userspace projects[1] seem to be
adopting meson so I expect that "learning something new" argument will
fade out.  And if vmwgfx crew comes to the conclusion that they could
replace scons with meson, that would be quite compelling.  (Enough to
justify keeping autotools and meson side-by-side for some time.)  And
if someone could figure out how to make meson work for android builds,
it would be a slam-dunk.

The existing mesa build is complex enough that I doubt it is something
that could be replaced in one fell swoop.  And I'm not really a fan of
living with 12 build systems in the long run.  So probably the best
approach is to try to replace scons with meson, and then see where it
goes from there.

[1] well, I know of gnome and gstreamer.. not sure if/when they will
drop autotools build

BR,
-R


> * Slow build times
> Before we jump into "the next cool thing", let us properly utilise
> what we have at the moment.
>  - I've asked multiple times about numbers behind those "let's make
> the build faster" patches, but never got any :-\
>  - I can improve things but would need access to a fancy XX core
> system to do rudimentary benchmarks/checks and test patches.
>
> Thanks
> Emil
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