unbound and meson build

Unbound
1

Hello Wouter, and others,

Would Unbound project be interested moving away from hand-written
Makefile.am and other autotool stuff to meson? Here is a preview
(hopefully to future) how things could look with meson:

https://github.com/kerolasa/unbound/tree/build-sys

I admit that the snapshot is not 100% done, as it compiles only
libunbound and unbound-anchor command, but it gives an idea how
compilations are done. Assuming there is apetite for new build tooling
then the todo list before sending change to review includes

* making all commands to compile
* change optional code to be optional in source lists (see pythonmod)
* make build system to generate dnstap and dnscrypt configs
* make tests to work
* compare old config.h to new meson that nothing is missed (I know few
defines are)
* make manuals and doxygen work
* add include, configure, licence, and such files to distribution
* try to convince someone to try meson on something else than linux,
and fix issues

Unarguably that is reasonable amount of work. To avoid wasting time
and effort could you inform if this sort of change has hope of be
merged, assuming all the obvious stuff if pitch perfect in the change?

Reference: http://mesonbuild.com/

p.s. My demo build-sys branch was made to convince I am serious about
this proposal, and I want to avoid 'talk is cheap' feedback.

2

Hi Sami,

Hello Wouter, and others,

Would Unbound project be interested moving away from hand-written
Makefile.am and other autotool stuff to meson? Here is a preview
(hopefully to future) how things could look with meson:

Thanks for the offer and sample code. However, no, we are not looking
for a new build system.

Meson has heavy build requirements (python3 and ninja are listed), and
this may not work for FreeBSD base system. We already avoid build
dependencies on gmake, and gcc.

Otherwise, the autoconf system neatly fits onto package managers'
systems and expectations. We also worry about all built details for
compromises and portability fixes that we had accrued so far that would
be lost. We appreciate a build system that may be better, but are
invested in the legacy system for now...

Best regards, Wouter

3

Fair enough. I'll keep dead branch in my repo just in case one day
someone finds this thread and wonders what this was about.

Meanwhile, autotooling could be improve but I feel less enthustiastic
spending time with that.

Cheers, thanks for stopping more effort to go waste.