Mesa Developers Move Closer To Dropping Autotools Build System In Favor Of Meson

[Weasel]

SystemCrasher Amen about the Python, exactly my sentiments. In fact every time I find a useful software I've really been looking for only to see it starts with "XYZ is a Python [...]" I nope the fuck out of it. What a shame.

[smitty3268]

I never had major problems with build system performance. In small projects it just not a big difference if it would be 1 second or two. In large things with huge code it would be compiler that spends most time anyway, to generate reasonably optimized code.

At this point, I can only say that it's pretty obvious you haven't tried it. The difference in build speed for Mesa is more than 1 or 2 seconds.

As for speed, look, autotools do work in weirdest configurations. And can at least give more or less human-comprehensible error message telling me what's wrong and what I lack. Somehow Meson isn't like this at all. Maybe that's why it fast. However I do not really get what problem it solves in first place. Autotools allow one to ensure their thing builds on nearly any crazy configuration people on planet can have. Or at least it would tell them what they have to change. Meson isn't like this at all. And if it would ever get anyhow comparable to autotools in regard of diverse platforms and environments support, it would have to do equally huge number of strange checks for all bizarre things. At which point its performance would hardly be better.

It'd be nice if you could give an example of some error or config that doesn't give a good error message on Meson but does with autotools. At this point, it seems like you just don't like change - which is fair enough, most people don't.

Whatever. I would rather die than use python for C software development. I like C. Python is the very opposite of what I like about C.

Fair enough, although I'm a little amused that you think shell script is better than python. It's got multiple variants/versions/etc. as well that you have to deal with, as not every system is using bash.

Also, Mesa has long used python to generate C code during the build anyway, so even using autotools it still requires python and has for YEARS. Maybe decades?

Anyway, that either means you never were building mesa even with autotools, or you actually don't avoid python quite as much as you seem to be saying...

Speaking for myself, if ppl are so eager to replace autotools, they can count on this breaking my workflows, so I would just give up on this and would no longer give a try to preliminary MESA versions. So I don't have to deal with all this meson, python and so on. Some maintaners could undertake this pain if they want to, but I'm out. Let RH nuts do it instead, they are at least paid for all this unpleasant shit.

I think the Mesa devs are ok with that.

[SystemCrasher]

At this point, I can only say that it's pretty obvious you haven't tried it. The difference in build speed for Mesa is more than 1 or 2 seconds.

Furtheremore, you can count on it to never happen. I wasted enough of my time on dealing with all kinds of python version oddities in my system - so any extra use of python faces my middle finger at this point.

It'd be nice if you could give an example of some error or config that doesn't give a good error message on Meson but does with autotools.

Autotools can send me to hell in any environment I tried, configure only needs shell to send me to hell, at least to start doing so. Lol, it does even on some odd things like mingw or cygwin, with bare minimum of assumptions.

Fair enough, although I'm a little amused that you think shell script is better than python. It's got multiple variants/versions/etc. as well that you have to deal with, as not every system is using bash.

Shell is better than python to my taste. It does works like unix way has been meant to - it does one thing and does it well. Python on other hand can do nearly everything - and always does it like crap, plagued all bizarre horrors one can imagine. So ancient shell scripts generally work on my system. Ancient python scripts... not a snowball chance in the hell. And the amount of python tantrum in, say, Debian testing is just fucking hilarious. They even haven't fully gone 3.6 but now its time for 3.7, not to mention half things failed to migrate from 2.x... and so overall it just plain mindfuck.

Also, Mesa has long used python to generate C code during the build anyway, so even using autotools it still requires python and has for YEARS. Maybe decades?

I have to admit Mesa build environment has always been really unpleasant to use, btw, and kind of rocket science to set up. And when it comes to meson, I would consider it just utterly hostile to me. Just that.

Anyway, that either means you never were building mesa even with autotools, or you actually don't avoid python quite as much as you seem to be saying...

I do build most annoying things in throw-away VMs and somesuch - with dev cruft installed. So I don't have to clean up all the MESS on my main environment. So I probably missed that fact. Mesa proven to be real mess in this regard anyway, being rather difficult thing to build and try. I've also eventually gave a try to piglit - but it proven to be nearly uncomprehensible borkzored crap. Uhh I'm yet to see any worse testing system/environment to the date.

I think the Mesa devs are ok with that.

I'm also perfectly fine to let them use their wonderful build systems themselves. Saves me plenty of time - even if curiosity eventually gets unsatisfied, it came to point it kinda well over of my head. So I hope you're happy locking me out of development processes, by making them more and more unpleasant to point I can't really handle it. Look, if I like to fiddle with C and Cish things it does not imply I'm anyhow happy about python crap.

[smitty3268]

I do build most annoying things in throw-away VMs and somesuch - with dev cruft installed. So I don't have to clean up all the MESS on my main environment. So I probably missed that fact. Mesa proven to be real mess in this regard anyway, being rather difficult thing to build and try.

So to elaborate, the tarballs with shipped versions included the pre-generated code and did not require python. But building straight from git did as those generated files were not included in source control.

[SystemCrasher]

Whatever, when I've built MESA it proven to be quite daunting to build it and get it on wheels. Now I would stop doing so for sure. Friend of mine, who is hardcore C/C++ algos wrangler who unfortunately uses Windows told me he dislikes Linux ecosystem because it mostly consists of grossly unprofessional trash, "shythonrust crap", rather than professional-quality tools. Somehow I have to admit he gets his point - it getting exactly the case. Such view has been pretty sad to hear yet it makes sense to me. Especially after facing news like this one.