Re: Meson build definition

[Christian Schoenebeck]

On Sonntag, 20. Dezember 2020 12:33:45 CET Daniele Nicolodi wrote:
> On 20/12/2020 08:09, Akim Demaille wrote:
> > Hi Daniele,
> > 
> >> Le 19 déc. 2020 à 20:17, Daniele Nicolodi <daniele@grinta.net> a écrit :
> >> 
> >> Hello,
> >> 
> >> I am working on a project that uses Bison to generate a parser and Meson
> >> as build system. I would like to include Bison as a subproject [1] in
> >> particular to make it easier for folks to hack on the project on OSes
> >> where managing dependencies is not easy (ie Windows).
> > 
> > I believe chocolatey addresses that issue.  And people who want to hack
> > Bison should certainly be able to use their Unix subsystem.
> 
> I realize I was not very clear: I meant working on my project (ie
> modifying the parser) not hacking on Bison itself. I agree that using
> the Bison main build system while working on Bison itself is a fair
> expectation.

It's indeed somewhat confusion what you're goal is. If I got you correctly,
your scenario are systems where Bison is already installed, and you just want
Meson deployed projects being able to just add '.y' sources files to their
meson.build file for them to be auto generated by Bison. If that's your
intention, then what you want is defining either a custom Meson 'target' or a
Meson 'generator':

https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/blob/master/test%20cases/frameworks/8%20flex/meson.build
https://mesonbuild.com/Generating-sources.html#using-generator

On Sonntag, 20. Dezember 2020 08:09:59 CET Akim Demaille wrote:
> > Despite many projects moving to Meson, unfortunately, I don't think that
> > it yet supports as many niche systems as autotools, thus it may not yet
> > be desirable for Bison to move away from autotools
> 
> Anyway, this is very unlikely to happen.  Bison belongs to an ecosystem
> where the Autotools are the standard.

I don't see Meson at a point already where it could be deployed with projects
that are typically built in rather conservative environments, as it is the
case with Bison. Right now you typically need a bleeding edge Meson version
for being able to build more complex projects with Meson.

Qemu just switched to Meson; they pull a specific Meson version in-tree as git
submodule in the Qemu git repository. But really, that's an effort on its own.

Best regards,
Christian Schoenebeck