Behind and Under the Scenes of the Meson Build System

Explore the intricacies of the Meson build system in this 45-minute conference talk from linux.conf.au 2020. Delve into the challenges and milestones encountered while building the foundations of a modern Linux userland, including projects like systemd, X.org, GStreamer, and Mesa graphics stack. Learn about the complexities of designing a low-level build system, from handling multiple distro upgrades to bootstrapping new processor architectures like RISC-V. Discover the bizarre ways people configure their projects, the pitfalls of environment variables, and the future of cross-language cooperation in building. Gain insights into the life of a build system developer, including amusing anecdotes like the suggestion to rewrite Meson in Perl. Understand the design challenges, option handling, and the importance of subproject isolation in build systems. Examine the usability dilemma and explore areas where the Meson project could use assistance.

Behind (and under) the scenes of the Meson build system
But first
The Meson Manual
Design challenge
Option C
Law of bad solutions
Combining flags
The correct answer is D
The D programming language
It gets better
Extra fun bug stuff
Chat with the project leader
The source of all complexity
Does it handle ...
gnustep-config --debug-flags
Comment from a BSD developer
Backporting fun • Ubuntu LTS releases need e.g. drivers for new graphics cards
Even stricter
More BSD comments
Adopting the new
File objects • Files are often used from a different directory than they are stored in
Bizarrely common
Jussi's Law of Programmers
Corollary
Subproject isolation
So what did people do?
The usability dilemma
Constructive feedback
Things we could use help with
In conclusion