[Spice-devel] [PATCH spice-gtk 04/12] Drop autotools

[Frediano Ziglio]

> Hi,
> 
> On Sat, Feb 09, 2019 at 11:49:35AM +0100, Marc-André Lureau wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 9:51 PM Jonathon Jongsma <jjongsma at redhat.com>
> > wrote:
> > > I do not always update my laptop to the latest release
> > > immediately. For example, I'm still running Fedora 28 on my
> > > laptop at the moment, which
> > 
> > Wouldn't "pip3 install --user meson" work? Even under old
> > distros?
> 
> I consider that a workaround. I prefer that we say, 'yeah, we
> don't support F28 anymore' rather than using different package
> managers.
> 

Well, IMHO can be a good workaround but I think you have to
consider also build system, I would say a good technique have
to:
- make build run without root (so --user is required);
- possible to do without network access (so "pip install" is bad
  but a good alternative is to bundle "pip download" and install
  the downloaded egg).
Just during the build such workaround come with some possible
additional requirement (not sure if that egg install with
additional python packages).

> > > as far as I know does not have a new enough version of meson to build
> > > git master. 'Backporting' doesn't solve that problem.
> > 
> > I meant backporting the fixes in a stable branch (not the
> > build-sys)
> > 
> > (ping for review of the rest of the series)
> 
> I'm all in for meson-only but we should at least have a release
> without fixes in meson files and without bumping it so much.
> 

Yes, agreed, at the moment the "ninja dist" does not work much,
just try a git clone + meson + ninja build, it fails, you have
to apply some workaround due to Meson bug with it.
Also not sure how many additional dependencies we need, they
should at least be documented and surely they will require some
packages (RPM spec or similar) changes, better to have these
stuff in place.

Really before removing autoconf I want:
1- Meson with the same level of features;
2- then a release;
3- then making sure the releases we support can use Meson (that
   is RHEL7 for example, here workaround like above are accepted
   but must be implemented);
4- then drop autoconf.

> I'd be happy to review a patch series with fixes only, without
> dropping autotools, for now.
> 

I don't see a stopover to review Marc-andre' patches here, just
that if they need autoconf removed should be updated to avoid
this.

> Cheers,
> 

Frediano