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

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 02:23:52PM +0200, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> Paolo Bonzini <address@hidden> writes:


> >                                       But for now, since rules are
> > written half in meson and half in make, ninja2make seems the most
> > transparent way to integrate the two.
> >
> >> Part of the downside of our current build system is that although it
> >> uses make, the usage is wierd and QEMU specific structure. It would
> >> be a shame to pick meson and then again use it is a way that is wierd
> >> and QEMU specific.
> >
> > I agree, this is why it's important to have at least a standard meson.build.
> >
> > Some knowledge of config-host.mak is needed, because meson.build uses
> > declare_dependency() instead of dependency() to link with libraries that
> > were already found by configure, but that's it.
> 
> Ignorant question: could the switch to Meson enable doing less in
> configure?  It's big and sloooow.

At a conceptual level meson is supposed to take over the role of both
configure and automake, so you have a single domain specific language
covering all aspects of your build system (though sometimes needs some
external python helper scripts to cover missing features in meson).

IOW, in a proper conversion, I'd expect configure to go away. I can
imagine that being one of the last steps in QEMU's conversion though

Regards,
Daniel
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