X.Org Server Bids Farewell To Autotools

[Nth_man]

At least I come across CMake far more often than Meson.

Yes:

• https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...26#post1273326
• https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...84#post1273284

[Vistaus]

Can't wait for the next FAD build system to come along and then everyone and their dog will jump again.

'Cause Autotools was a young project that X.org switched to only recently… [/sarcasm]

[Vistaus]

There's obviously some conspiracy going on.

You can't take a build system depending on Python as anything more than a toy. That's a fact.

Yet a lof big projects have switched to said “toy” or are in the process of switching. That's a fact.

[sdack]

Yes:

• https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...26#post1273326
• https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...84#post1273284

Thanks for sharing.

[jbranso]

Plus Meson has better cross-platform support....

Is this actually true? Doesn't autotools support all sorts of crazy small OSes?

What about OSs that have really poor python support?

Just curious.

[RealNC]

Can't wait for the next FAD build system to come along and then everyone and their dog will jump again.

You must be Amish. :P

[cjcox]

It sounds better than it is. It's like, I painted by red car green by stripping the red paint and painting it, you wouldn't believe the amount of red paint removed from the car by switching to green.

[RahulSundaram]

Plus Meson has better cross-platform support....

Is this actually true? Doesn't autotools support all sorts of crazy small OSes?

What about OSs that have really poor python support?

Just curious.

Meson has better cross platform support for major operating systems that people actually use including Linux and Windows. Autotools has better support if you use niche operating systems.

[andreano]

The biggest problem I have seen so far is when build tools require the presence of an Internet connection in order to install packages from a random server during a build.

I think that's fine, even great, as a fallback.

You know, the experience of compiling most software is to run configure, find a missing library, install that, and repeat until all dependencies are satisfied or a dependency is called something else on your distro, and you have to give up. So if you just want to build the damn thing (as opposed to packaging it the ideal way) the compilation model of go and cargo makes sense. Now, what if there was a build system that made it easy to use system libraries where available, and only download the missing dependencies (which can be disabled)? That's Meson.

Actually, you can implement the same in CMake, but it isn't a trivial & encouraged thing to do, for some reason.

[Weasel]

A bit harsh, but I get your point.

However, Python is easy enough to install. The biggest problem I have seen so far is when build tools require the presence of an Internet connection in order to install packages from a random server during a build. Those are taking it too far in my opinion. For GNOME and other graphics-related software, which require a bit more than a C compiler and the base library, is it acceptable to rely on Python. Autotools made the most sense when we had many competing UNIXes with all sorts of shell flavours. Those days are over.

Waiting for the day when Python itself switches to Meson and then you can't build anything anymore because you can't even build Python itself.

This should literally tell you why it's a toy or stupid build system.