GNOME Developers Continue Working On Meson Build System, Much Faster Build Times

[starshipeleven]

That is a terrible feature for deterministic builds. That stuff might probably be acceptable for web development which is a complete wild-west style fsckpot of mess anyway but for any large software project it simply would not be suitable.

Well, it's not forced. It's there if you need it. Someone assumes that if you are running a large software project you probably know that it isn't a good idea.

I'd personally like to be able to make static builds of a bunch of CLI tools without having to track down arcane compiler errors for hours, for example.

[bkor]

Well, it's not forced. It's there if you need it. Someone assumes that if you are running a large software project you probably know that it isn't a good idea.

I'd personally like to be able to make static builds of a bunch of CLI tools without having to track down arcane compiler errors for hours, for example.

Or a depencency like webkit and firefox. That takes ages to compile while you might only want a small part of it (js engine).

[PyroDevil]

That is a terrible feature for deterministic builds. That stuff might probably be acceptable for web development which is a complete wild-west style fsckpot of mess anyway but for any large software project it simply would not be suitable. For Windows I generally provide the headers and .dll (to generate a compiler specific lib from) with the project but for everything else, yum install, apt-get install is what we use *nix for!

I am not quite sure I understand you argument. Why is having a file where the dependent library with version number and even hash of the tarball and applied patches something that is bad for deterministic build?

[starshipeleven]

I am not quite sure I understand you argument. Why is having a file where the dependent library with version number and even hash of the tarball and applied patches something that is bad for deterministic build?

He is talking of large projects.
It's not uncommon to find large projects that keep their own copy of quite a few libraries in the source that eventually get outdated as only crucial fixes get ported (to avoid potential breakage), or customize them a little (for their own usecase).