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Re: would it be time to replace scons with meson build system?


From: Paul Fertser
Subject: Re: would it be time to replace scons with meson build system?
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2020 02:40:42 +0300
User-agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13)

Hello,

On Wed, Feb 05, 2020 at 05:55:15PM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Bernd Zeimetz <address@hidden>:
> > Imho the only useful alternative is cmake. Or meson, if you really think so.
> 
> Both two-phase systems.  Why do people keep building these things?
> It's a bad idea that never gets better noo matter how often it's
> repeated.

For many people it feels natural that build _configuration_ (that is,
arranging things in a way suitable for a specific system with specific
user options) and the build itself are very distinct tasks requiring
different sets of features. And sometimes installing (and not
installing when one wants to run or debug a program with shared
libraries) build artifacts properly is a separate non-trivial task as
well. So the motivation to decouple and modularise the steps is clear.

An interesting project that is able to solve the building part is
tup[0] (not that I suggest to consider it for gpsd, but reading the
description is worth it IMHO).

Speaking on topic, I'd say that for a project like GPSD the build
system should be simple and "the least surprising" to the users. For
that it needs to be robust, popular and support cross-building. SCons
was, unfortunately, the source of serious confusion way too many
times.

CMake fits the bill. How often have you seen people complaining about
difficulties debugging CMake files? Yes, it's essentially
autoconf+automake just without most of the legacy useless tests and
with a new silly language instead of the now-obscure m4+shell. Yes,
it's a two-stage system. And yes, I'd say it's likely to make your
users a bit happier.

Just my two cents.

[0] http://gittup.org/tup/index.html

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