[Mesa-dev] Lets talk about autotools

[Jason Ekstrand]

On November 29, 2018 19:49:33 Alex Deucher <alexdeucher at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 8:26 PM Eric Anholt <eric at anholt.net> wrote:
>>
>> Emil Velikov <emil.l.velikov at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I can see why people may opt to not use or maintain the autotools build.
>>> Although I would kindly ask that we do not remove it just yet.
>>>
>>> In Mesa, we have different parts not used by different teams. As such
>>> we tend to remove stuff when nobody is around to maintain it anymore.
>>>
>>> That said, I'm planning to continue maintaining it and would appreciate
>>> if we keep it in-tree.
>>>
>>> As people may be concerned about bugreports and alike we can trivially
>>> add a warning (as configure is invoked) to forwards any issues to my
>>> email. Additionally (or alternatively) we can have an autotools bugzilla
>>> category with me as the default assignee.
>>>
>>> What do you guys think?
>>
>> Strongly disagree.  We shouldn't be maintaining build systems for fun,
>> we should be doing the minimum amount of build system work to get our
>> actual work done quickly and reliably.
>
> If someone has a legitimate use for it and wants to maintain it, why
> not?  How is the build system any different than a specific feature in
> the project?

Does it have a purpose?  I know it has a maintenance burden.  How is it 
different? As long as it exists, it is going to impose that maintenance 
burden on all of the developers in the project. As long as someone is using 
autotools to build Mesa (especially if that someone is a developer), we all 
have to keep it working.

--Jason