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I think being sort of "rigid" is part of the appeal of Meson and definitely intentional (keeps complexity down). I can understand how that might be off-putting

by dxuh 6y ago

I think being sort of "rigid" is part of the appeal of Meson and definitely intentional (keeps complexity down). I can understand how that might be off-putting or even obstructive to some though. But being too flexible is in a way what made CMake and autotools so bad. I have only done really small stuff with Meson, so I haven't had problems like the Emscripten one you described and I can't say much about it. Regarding static libs Meson docs explicitly state that "library" is preferred over "shared_library", so that you can choose at build configuration time. If some dependency of yours does not follow this advice without having a good reason for it the fault is with them. I use CMake over Makefiles, because for libraries you want people to be able to easily integrate your stuff, so you need to use what everyone uses. And in general it's still the best way to have a (mostly) platform-independent build. Yes, almost all non-trivial CMake files have a bunch of platform-specific extra stuff, but at least you can do it. I also cannot believe how bad the dependency finding works. It actually doesn't work more than it does work. Very often even with libraries that I installed through my systems package manager. I also consider CMake horribly flawed, but it's still better than raw Makefiles.

Cloudef 6y ago
I'm not sure I agree with the complexity. You can go read CMake's and Meson's source code and probably agree with me it's not very trivial. Sure they can provide you a "cross-platform" build with ease, but it doesn't come free. You are giving away flexibility and it only works when it works. When it doesn't work you usually have to employ ugly hacks or your build files start to creep in way more complexity than would be needed with native solution, or even by using a simple Makefile or heck even a shell script. In worst case, you'll become a CMake or Meson developer to add that missing functionality, or fix bugs whatever, just to get your thing to build. I also want to point out that the build system isn't just for you, it's also for the users and packagers. Especially for packagers it's important the flexibility is there. I used to use CMake myself a lot way back as well, but eventually got fed up with its problems it always caused (mostly when other people tried to package my projects and there was always some incompatibility or dependencies not being linked correctly, etc...). I also used to think Makefiles are bad, but actually when I sat down reading the GNU Make's manual many things clicked with me, and (GNU) Makefiles are actually very good at building stuff and they aren't that complex at all. Sure there's lots of bad Makefiles around the internet (just like there's also bad CMakeLists) the Makefiles are very powerful when written correctly, and most importantly they are very very fast.

by dxuh 6y ago

Cloudef 6y ago

I'm not sure I agree with the complexity. You can go read CMake's and Meson's source code and probably agree with me it's not very trivial. Sure they can provide you a "cross-platform" build with ease, but it doesn't come free. You are giving away flexibility and it only works when it works. When it doesn't work you usually have to employ ugly hacks or your build files start to creep in way more complexity than would be needed with native solution, or even by using a simple Makefile or heck even a shell script. In worst case, you'll become a CMake or Meson developer to add that missing functionality, or fix bugs whatever, just to get your thing to build. I also want to point out that the build system isn't just for you, it's also for the users and packagers. Especially for packagers it's important the flexibility is there. I used to use CMake myself a lot way back as well, but eventually got fed up with its problems it always caused (mostly when other people tried to package my projects and there was always some incompatibility or dependencies not being linked correctly, etc...). I also used to think Makefiles are bad, but actually when I sat down reading the GNU Make's manual many things clicked with me, and (GNU) Makefiles are actually very good at building stuff and they aren't that complex at all. Sure there's lots of bad Makefiles around the internet (just like there's also bad CMakeLists) the Makefiles are very powerful when written correctly, and most importantly they are very very fast.