Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 3/7] configure: integrate Meson in the build system

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 27/06/19 15:16, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
>  Hi,
> 
>> Ok, I can understand that. I've been thinking about how we can switch
>> libvirt to use meson too, and trying to decide between meson being the
>> owner, calling out to make  vs keeping make as the owner and calling
>> out to meson. Ultimately to entirely banish make, autoconf, automake,
>> libtool, m4 & shell from our build system :-)
>>
>> Despite thinking about an incremental conversion though, I was still
>> hoping libvirt would just have a single (largish) patch series to
>> do a complete conversion at a specific point in time.
> 
> Another possible approach would be to have two build systems.
> The traditional configure & make and the new meson & ninja.
> 
> Advantage is we don't have to worry about the transition and mixing &
> make + meson at all.
> 
> Disadvantage is the duplication.  That wouldn't be forever though.
> I'd expect we'll have one or maybe two releases with both build systems,
> then delete the make & configure.

Yeah, I have seen other projects do this.  On the other hand I'm not
sure how you avoid bitrot in one of the two, and having to convert the
huge configure script from the beginning seems like a daunting task.

Paolo