Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] meson: add support for 'headers-check'

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:19:38 -0700

Karthik Nayak <[email-masked]> writes:

> The Makefile supports a target called 'hdr-check', which checks if
> individual header files can be independently compiled. Let's port this
> functionality to meson, our new build system too.

Good goal.

> Let's avoid the abbreviation and name the target 'headers-check', which
> is easier to read.

This is a bit dubious.  Are developers supposed to keep track of
correspondence between the long establish name and the new name this
patch just came up with?  For how long?

If we make it one of our goals to name the build target in
pronounceable ways, that is perfectly fine, and it would be a good
task to allow "make headers-check" be a synonym for "make hdr-check"
(and do the same on the meson side), and deprecate hdr-check in a
cycle or two (this is not end-user facing, so the transition period
can legitimately be much shorter than usual.

But we still need to have some transition period to help those who
build from the source adjust their set-ups that have called "make
hdr-check" for a long time.