[Mesa-dev] [PATCH mesa] drop autotools

[Eric Engestrom]

On Tuesday, 2018-12-18 09:51:19 +0100, Juan A. Suarez Romero wrote:
> On Mon, 2018-12-17 at 19:51 +0100, Bas Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 6:33 PM Juan A. Suarez Romero
> > <jasuarez at igalia.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 10:21 +0000, Eric Engestrom wrote:
> > > > Cc: Emil Velikov <emil.l.velikov at gmail.com>
> > > > Cc: Andres Gomez <agomez at igalia.com>
> > > > Cc: Juan A. Suarez Romero <jasuarez at igalia.com>
> > > > Cc: Dylan Baker <dylan at pnwbakers.com>
> > > > Signed-off-by: Eric Engestrom <eric.engestrom at intel.com>
> > > > ---
> > > > This patch depends on the releasing procedure in docs/releasing.html to
> > > > be updated to not rely on autotools anymore.
> > > > 
> > > > I think our release managers (cc'ed) should work together and figure out
> > > > the procedure they want to go by; only once that's done can we delete
> > > > these 200+ files and 14k+ lines :)
> > > 
> > > I'll let others to talk. But my preference would be to land this for next 19.0
> > > branchpoint, just a couple of days before the branchpoint, so 19.0.x releases
> > > get rid of autotools.
> > > 
> > > This way we have time to fix any remaining issue, and make like easier for those
> > > in charge of 18.3.x releases, which I think should support autotools until the
> > > end of its life.
> > 
> > Can I suggest the inverse, pushing this long before any branchpoint?
> > 
> > As with any migration, users only start using when you force them too,
> > and that means a bunch of non-working usecases are going to be
> > detected once this patch is pushed and some more people are forced to
> > it. Sure, the last call discussion served to tease some of these out,
> > but I expect even more will turn up if you submit this.
> > 

I agreed here, something this big should be done as far in advance as
possible.

> 
> The bad part is that this make life more complex for the person in charge of the
> stable release, because it means that any patch that touches the build system
> will only touch the meson, but not the autotools, which means either the
> original author or the release manager should fix the part of the autotools in
> order to avoid breaking it.

I agree, but also we're deleting it, we're already past the point of
deprecating it, which means IMO it's fine to not fix it anymore
(exceptions can always be made, but that would be the general rule).

> 
> Of course, I'm assuming that once we remove the autotools, this must be kept in
> the entire life of the stable cycle branch.  Of course, if it is fine to remove
> autotools between versions of the same X.Y releases, then go ahead.

No, I don't think something like this should be done in the middle of
a stable branch.


BTW just to be clear, Dylan's patch superseeds mine and we'll land his
(and he actually deserves the credit for getting rid of autotools):
https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/265715/