Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: moving OpenRC to a meson-based build

[Austin English]

On 02/01/2017 10:46 AM, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 01, 2017 at 03:55:17PM +0000, James Le Cuirot wrote:
>> On Wed, 1 Feb 2017 09:39:34 -0600
>> William Hubbs <williamh@g.o> wrote:
>>
>>> I thought about autotools. I'm not really fond of its syntax, and I've
>>> been told that, to use autotools correctly, I would need to start
>>> generating manual release tarballs again because I would need to put
>>> the autotools generated cruft in them.
>>
>> Not all that hard, to be honest. Autotools adds a "make dist" target and
>> then you just upload that tarball to GitHub by adding a new release.
>
> Is that functionality available through the github API, or do you have
> to go to the web site?
>
> Also, another concern I would have is the tarballs are not reproducible
> that way.
>
> William
>

Well, you could check in the generated files, if you're worried about
reproducible builds. E.g., Wine does that:
https://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/blob/HEAD:/configure

The build files change pretty rarely, and it saves end users the trouble
of needing to have autoconf/automake, while also providing reproducible
tarballs. I think that strongly outweighs the "they're unnecessary /
easily generated" argument.

Back to the original question, I'm of the opinion that the build system
should be something well tested, not some fad project. Autotools/Cmake
would both fit the bill here. I'm not deeply involved with OpenRC
though, so it's really up to you.

At the end of the day though, if you're just researching if it's viable
and not actually implementing it, then you don't really need to see if
other people are okay with it. Make a separate git branch from master
and go nuts.

-- 
-Austin

Austin English
Gentoo Developer
GPG: 00B3 2957 B94B F3E1