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

[Kenneth Graunke]

On Thursday, March 23, 2017 4:39:50 AM PDT Emil Velikov wrote:
> On 22 March 2017 at 20:10, Dylan Baker <dylan at pnwbakers.com> wrote:
[snip]
> The more frustrating part is that atm autotools build is "bug-free"
> and with meson will have to go through the same route again :-\

"Bug-free" - famous last words :)

It is definitely working a lot better than it used to.  I'm grateful
to those who helped make it so (yourself included).

> > For my part, it took me about 3 or 4 days of reading through the docs and
> > writing the libdrm port to get it right, and a lot of that is just the
> > boilerplate of having ~8 drivers that all need basically the same logic.
> >
> Slightly off-topic - 3 days to write the build script for ~10 [nearly]
> identical libraries which do not do anything fancy, seems a lot.
> Which was the most time consuming part ?

As I believe Dylan explained...a lot of his time was spent learning
autotools and its idioms, so he knew how best to translate things.
(Dylan is pretty familiar with CMake, but less so with automake.)
Eric was able to work much more quickly, being already familiar with
the existing build system.

> I'm concerned that we would have to enforce the same time penalty onto
> dozens of developers unfamiliar with meson.
> 
> Thanks
> Emil

There's a time penalty figuring out any build system.  Most people try
to remain blissfully unaware of it as much as possible.  And then, most
tasks people do are pretty simple (adding files, deleting files, etc).
When something complex comes up...it takes time, reading, and sometimes
asking for help...no matter what system you use.

--Ken
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