[Mesa-dev] last call for autotools

[Ilia Mirkin]

On Fri, Dec 14, 2018 at 2:13 AM Matt Turner <mattst88 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 10:19 PM Ilia Mirkin <imirkin at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> > So now what? I don't remember how that config was done, except that it
> > was done the way I decided I needed it at the time. I have no way to
> > recover it. With autotools, in such cases (which are immensely rare),
> > you just run "head config.log" and it tells you what you did last
> > time. And by updating the build component, now I have to rebuild
> > EVERYTHING?
>
> Since it uses ccache, that should take about 20 seconds...

I don't have ccache. No clue how to set it up, and don't have the disk
space for it anyways -- constantly teetering on the edge of fullness.
It takes about 10 minutes to build. And if the hope is that meson
becomes used for other projects, then this is multiplied by all the
other meson-using projects. Your answer is an apology for tool
shortcomings.

As someone who frequently builds a particular project, I'm sure you
have everything all set up perfectly (enough) for your situation. But
you're not the average user. I have things set up "well enough" as
well. I edit a handful of files, and expect a ~full rebuild when I
rebase, which I do relatively rarely.

The average user is the one who knows just a smidgen more than
"./configure; make install". That's what I mean by the user experience
being better in autotools.

But like I said on IRC ... if I'm the lone cranky old man who doesn't
like the new thing, then I won't (and probably couldn't even if I
wanted to) stand in the way of this. However my impression is that
there's a larger contingent dissatisfied with meson.

  -ilia