[Mesa-dev] Lets talk about autotools

[Eero Tamminen]

Hi,

On 27.11.2018 19.05, Matt Turner wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 1:13 AM Timo Aaltonen <tjaalton at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> On 17.11.2018 6.04, Dylan Baker wrote:
>>> Quoting Dylan Baker (2018-09-17 09:44:07)
>>>> I feel like for !windows meson is in good enough shape at this point that we
>>>> can start having the discussion about deleting the autotools build. So, is there
>>>> anything left that autotools can do that meson cannot (that we actually want to
>>>> implement)? And, what is a reasonable time-table to remove the autotools build?
>>>> I think we could reasonably remove it as soon as 18.3 if others felt confident
>>>> that it would work for them.
>>>
>>> Okay, time for an update on things and a chance to talk about what else we need.
>>>
>>> Support for llvm-config (and any binary, actually) overriding has landed in
>>> meson, and will be present in the 0.49.0 release, which is due out December 9th.
>>
>> Hi, just a note that Ubuntu 18.04 LTS ships with meson 0.45.1 and will
>> get Mesa backports up until and including 20.0.x, so I wonder how
>> complex these required new features in meson are to be backported, or
>> perhaps easily worked around? Backporting a whole new version of meson
>> might not happen..
> 
> I understand the LTS concept, but what's the value in never upgrading
> something like a build tool like Meson? Yeah, new versions give a
> possibility of regressions, but with something evolving as quickly as
> Meson the version available in April 2018 becomes less useful for its
> intended purpose with each passing month...

Ubuntu has so called hardware enabling (HWE) packages, which provide
newer versions of kernel, mesa and few other components for LTS, and
a meta package(s) that pull those in. They're based on package versions
tested in development versions of Ubuntu.

For example, relevant Ubuntu 18.10 packages would be available as
HWE packages for 18.04 somewhere around February, according to
preliminary Ubuntu kernel schedule.

Of the packages relevant to Mesa, 18.10 has for example:
- kernel v4.18   (18.04 has v4.15)
- LLVM v7.0      (18.04 has LLVM v6)
- Meson v0.47.2  (18.04 has v0.45)

I don't know how much that 4 month gap (before new development
distro release package versions become available in preceding LTS
release as HW packages) fluctuates.

Timo?


	- Eero