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

[Dylan Baker]

Hey Kai,

Quoting Kai Wasserbäch (2017-03-21 11:36:31)
> I hope the rest of the Mesa project would follow such a rule. Because if there's
> something I absolutely hate about all those "new" build systems, then it's their
> tendency to just download stuff and build/include that. This seems to have risen
> with Node and now spread into Rust and other parts of the FLOSS eco-system.

I think we have enough distro people in the project that they would revert a use
of wrap on linux :)

> CMake or SCons would do the same AFAICS. Plus CMake seems to be used in the
> Android eco-system already
> (<https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/cmake.html>), which might mean it
> could be easier for the Android downstreams of Mesa? Not sure on that though.

I don't think this really helps our android problem, since mesa is part of the
core anrdoid tree for devices using mesa, it needs android.mk files (I think
someone mentioned that they're migrating to blueprint?), and that doesn't
support cmake, autotools, scons, or meson. If meson is useful I'm willing to
propose and write an android.mk or blueprint backend for meson if the meson
community wants it.

> > 2) meson much simpler than autotools, scons, or (especially) cmake
> 
> OTOH CMake gives you CTest/CDash
> (<https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/ctest.1.html>), CPack
> (<https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cpack.1.html>), dependency
> visualisation
> (<https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/module/CMakeGraphVizOptions.html>) and
> many other things for (basically) free. Maybe that warrants some complexity?

Meson generates a 'ninja test' target, and has a mesontest which I assume is
similar to CTest, but I've never used mesontest or CTest tbh, so I can't comment
too much about either.

> > 3) recursive meson files, flat ninja file.
> 
> IIRC you would also get the same with CMake if you target Ninja.

That's fair.

> > 
> > I've never had to use gitattributes for anything, are you thinking for setting
> > export-ignore and export-subst?
> 
> Yep. AFAICT we have several files which aren't distributed if you do "make
> dist". Those would need to be excluded from a tarball built with git archive as
> well. AFAIK that's done through having .gitattributes files in the tree.

I'll have a look at what ends up in the dist-tarball and what ends up in a
git-archive tarbal too. Thanks for pointing that out.

> Anyway, I don't want to bikeshed here, so I'll be silent as long as any possible
> future build system doesn't download stuff behind my back.
> 
> Thanks for your reply!
> 
> Cheers,
> Kai

Thanks for your reply Kai, I hadn't even noticed wrap, so at the very least it's
good to see that's there, and I'll be sure to add a note to the README that we
don't use wrap on Linux, BSD and similar.

Dylan
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