I really like how we collectively debugged the issue and identified the root cause, even without Alex responding. This is so cool, thanks everyone! <3
Alex,
Yes it's true that makefile will be deleted soon, probably later this year. It's a very good time to switch to meson, and please complain if anything doesn't work for you, feedback is very welcome.
The first few paragraphs of README "Build Instructions" introduce meson and redirect to the documentation at /Documentation/building.md.
Also because documentation is active WIP at the moment, after patch https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/73359 will be merged, it will be moved to doc/dev_guide/building_from_source.rst
I admit those first few paragraphs of README (which I added in December 2022) have room for improvement. Also the whole README has room for improvement, and we are planning to take care of it soon.
I noticed you complained about
It doesn’t seem possible to cleanly build flashrom without installing a TON of dependencies
Some of the dependencies are optional and only needed if certain programmers are needed. But I feel maybe you got grumpy at sphinx-build and it was the last straw. As I mentioned before, if you build with meson, sphinx-build is optional. All the docs in doc/ directory are in .rst format which is easily readable by the human eye, so fetching the source code will be sufficient to read the docs.
And of course, you are always welcome to send a patch. Good luck and tell us how it goes!