17 ms·

Meson is a front end. Edit: Caution: This statement is incorrect--It can generate CMakefiles as a backend. It can also generate build files for MSVC. It can

by bsder 3y ago

Meson is a front end. Edit: Caution: This statement is incorrect--It can generate CMakefiles as a backend. It can also generate build files for MSVC. It can also generate standard Makefiles. Edit: Corrected downstream. CMake can make Ninja files which Meson also makes. I got this backwards but kept the edit so people won't get confused. CMake is NOT a gold standard. CMake is an agglomerative disaster. For example: try getting CMake to accept zig as your compiler. "Oh, your compiler command has a space in it? So sorry. I'm going to put everything after the space in all manner of weird places. Some correct--some broken--some totally random." If you're lucky CMake crashes with an inscrutable message. If you're unlucky, you wind up with a compiler command that fails in bizarre ways and no way to figure out why CMake is doing what it did. This is my experience with CMake every damn time--some absolutely inscrutable bug pops up until I figure out how to route around it. If I'm really unlucky, I have to file a bug report with CMake as I can't route around it. Sure, if some unfortunate soul has beaten CMake into submission and produced a functioning CMakefile, CMake works. If YOU are the poor slob having to create that CMakefile, you are in for worlds and worlds and worlds of pain.

spookie 3y ago
I agree, I stay away from CMake whenever possible. I've tried so much to understand it, and yet, it kicks me around like a pinata
- akoboldfrying 3y ago
  Same. By now I almost have an allergic reaction to thinking about using it. I know the basic thing I'm trying to do is not going to work, and that I'm going to wind up opening 20 browser tabs that alternate between (1) trying to understand from first principles how to do it properly (and getting frustrated going around in circles through their labyrinthine yet thoroughly incomplete docs), and (2) just desperately searching the rest of the web for the right incantation to whisper (and getting frustrated by all the blog posts and forum answers that describe how to do the thing before they went and changed how everything works). Feeling the rage and despair build as hours roll by, and you're still staring at a screen full of the most cretinous syntax ever excreted into the world.
bonzini 3y ago
Note that Meson does not generate CMake files. It generates MSVC or ninja files.
- bsder 3y ago
  Sorry. You are correct. I forgot that it's CMake that can now generate Ninja files.
  - maccard 3y ago
    > I forgot that it's CMake that can now generate Ninja files. Cmake has had ninja support for a long time. I've used it for at least 7 years at this point.

by bsder 3y ago

spookie 3y ago

I agree, I stay away from CMake whenever possible. I've tried so much to understand it, and yet, it kicks me around like a pinata

akoboldfrying 3y ago
Same. By now I almost have an allergic reaction to thinking about using it. I know the basic thing I'm trying to do is not going to work, and that I'm going to wind up opening 20 browser tabs that alternate between (1) trying to understand from first principles how to do it properly (and getting frustrated going around in circles through their labyrinthine yet thoroughly incomplete docs), and (2) just desperately searching the rest of the web for the right incantation to whisper (and getting frustrated by all the blog posts and forum answers that describe how to do the thing before they went and changed how everything works). Feeling the rage and despair build as hours roll by, and you're still staring at a screen full of the most cretinous syntax ever excreted into the world.

bonzini 3y ago

Note that Meson does not generate CMake files. It generates MSVC or ninja files.

bsder 3y ago
Sorry. You are correct. I forgot that it's CMake that can now generate Ninja files.
- maccard 3y ago
  > I forgot that it's CMake that can now generate Ninja files. Cmake has had ninja support for a long time. I've used it for at least 7 years at this point.