Subject: Re: ./configure fails to link test program due to missing dependencies

From: Patrick Steinhardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2024 21:15:36 +0200

Hey Eli,

dropping the mailing list for a bit: I really want Meson to start become
a thing in Git. I very much feel that the current build infrastructure
is antiquated and has lots of issues. And while we do have CMake wired
up somewhat already, it neither is a replacement due to it lacking heaps
of features/autodetection, nor is it a direction I really want to go.

It also seems to be the right point in time: Junio hasn't really been a
fan of converting our build system in the past, but his response to my
ramblings was surprisingly positive. The session I hosted during the Git
contributor's summit also seemed positive overall, but I naturally still
anticipate some bikeshedding.

So I highly appreciate all the info that you've been posting in this
context, as it helps to solidify my stance quite a bit! Which brings me
to my ask: would you be willing to do an off-list review before I post
things to the Git mailing list? The intent here is to mostly make things
look as nice as possible and work out-of-the-box to hopefully sway the
list more into favor of Meson.

My current state is that I've got libgit.a set up while detecting many
of the important platform-specific bits, the Git executable links just
fine and I've got unit tests wired up and executing correctly. Still
missing is documentation, Perl modules, and fixing some last remaining
bugs around locales in t0200 and t7816.

Anyway, the current version of this can be found at [1]. Feel free to
have a look and provide any feedback, either on the merge request or as
a patch on top. It can be built with `meson setup -Dpython=disabled
-Dperl=disabled`, enabling these options breaks a bunch more stuff.

Thanks!

Patrick

[1]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/git/-/merge_requests/217