Re: Upcoming changes

[Michael Biebl <mbiebl gmail com>]

Hi

2017-04-04 15:11 GMT+02:00 Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>:
> In the 3.26 timeframe, several GNOME modules are looking to adopt meson as
> build system.

Do we have an idea how many modules will use Meson in 3.26?

Afaics, we already have modules which dropped the autotools build system.
I guess it would be less disruptive if we supported both build systems
for one or two release cycles. I understand that this means more work
though. What's the official take on this issue from the release teams
side?

> Apart from the python3 dependency (which shouldn't be a problem, really),
> this means that these modules will no longer have traditional 'make dist'
> style tarballs, since that is not  a feature meson has. Instead, we will
> look at providing git archive style tarballs, in order guarantee
> reproducability - git tags can be moved too easily.

I guess this also means, no longer shipping any pre-generated files in
general. That affects
- gtk-doc
- vala

At least in case of Vala, we have a downstream bug report [1], that
the generated files are not reproducible. So be no longer shipping
those files in the dist tarball, we would regress in that regard.
On the other hand, I usually prefer to build as much as possible from
source (this includes running autoreconf even for dist tarballs
shipping a full autotools build system).

I'm not sure if the Vala maintainers are already aware of that issue.

That said, I have no problems with git style tarballs. As already
said, I actually prefer rebuilding everything and not using
pre-generated files.

As for Meson: I'm excited to see that happening. While I don't have a
lot of experience yet with that new build system, I liked what I saw
so far. I also tried already to improve the Meson support in our
Debian debhelper suite [2].

Regards,
Michael



[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=802528
[2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=795253
-- 
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?