Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] meson: wire up gitk and git-gui

From: Patrick Steinhardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2026 12:56:24 +0100

On Wed, Feb 04, 2026 at 05:00:11AM -0500, Karthik Nayak wrote:
> Patrick Steinhardt <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> > Wire up both gitk and git-gui in Meson as subprojects. These two
> > programs should be the last missing pieces for feature compatibility
> > with our Makefile for distributors.
> >
> > Note that Meson expects subprojects to live in the "subprojects/"
> > directory. Create symlinks to fulfill this requirement.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <[email-masked]>
> > ---
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have upstreamed support for Meson into both gitk [1] and git-gui [2].
> > This small patch series wires up support in Git.
> >
> > Changes in v2:
> >   - Use symlinks instead of moving both gitk and git-gui into the
> >     "subprojects/" directory.
> >   - Rebased on v2.53.0, as it's been a while since v1 :)
> >   - Link to v1: https://lore.kernel.org/r/[email-masked]
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Patrick
> 
> 
> So in the previous version, we moved these projects into 'subprojects/',
> but we now use symlinks instead. Do you know if there is perhaps an
> issue in Meson to support configurable subproject paths? If so, we could
> eventually drop the symlink.

There already is such support: you can configure subprojects to live in
an arbitrary location by setting the `subproject_dir` parameter in the
`project()` call. But there are some restrictions in place here:

  - It cannot be an absolute path.

  - It must not start with a dot.

  - It must not contain "../".

So that means it's not possible to specify the top-level directory, and
that seems to be a concious decision.

Patrick