On Tue, 22 Mar 2022 at 12:07, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006@gmx.net wrote:
AFAIR there were three arguments for meson:
- Meson build integrates nicely with other packages built by meson
This means we can build libflashrom as a subproject, which means we can build the flashrom plugin even when the distro doesn't ship [a new enough] flashrom package: https://github.com/fwupd/fwupd/blob/main/subprojects/flashrom.wrap
That's just something you can't do with the Makefile, and removing the subproject would force us to remove flashrom support from almost all the CI systems we test fwupd with.
- Native support for most non-Linux platforms
I keep hearing this, but haven't got any actual data -- is there any reason why the meson build system wouldn't "just work" with *BSD/Win32/macOS?
I think Meson was a good idea, but it failed to get traction beyond "we need it for dynamic libflashrom".
I don't know how you've managed to get to "failed to get traction" given that it's being built with meson in 4 of the biggest projects (in terms of distribution, and number of deployed packages) using flashrom.
This is all so frustrating: This feels like more of an existential crisis about what flashrom actually *is* rather than a discussion about build systems.
Richard.