Re: [PATCH 0/3] Use meson_options.txt in the configure script

["Philippe Mathieu-Daudé" <philmd@redhat.com>]

On 8/30/21 7:11 AM, Thomas Huth wrote:
> On 29/08/2021 23.22, Marc-André Lureau wrote:
>> Hi Thomas
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 29, 2021 at 9:32 PM Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com
>> <mailto:thuth@redhat.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     It's cumbersome to maintain the build options twice, one time in the
>>     configure script and one time in meson_options.txt. Thus let's add
>> some
>>     logic to the configure script to look at the meson_options.txt file
>>     instead of handling every option twice.
>>
>>     Thomas Huth (3):
>>        configure: Add the possibility to read options from
>> meson_options.txt
>>        configure: Remove options that can be handled via
>> meson_options.txt
>>          instead
>>        configure: Get help text from meson_options.txt
>>
>>       configure         | 429
>> ++++++----------------------------------------
>>       meson_options.txt |   2 +-
>>       2 files changed, 53 insertions(+), 378 deletions(-)
>>
>>
>> It looks similar to:
>> https://patchew.org/QEMU/20210107140039.467969-1-pbonzini@redhat.com/
>> Isn't it? (I haven't studied in details neither, I may be out of topic).
> 
> Oh, right, thanks for the pointer, I wasn't aware of that series yet.
> It's indeed similar to patch 8/8 from Paolo's series. But while Paolo is
> using an additional Perl-script and a json file for handling the
> configure options, my series just uses some lines of shell code in the
> configure script.
> 
> Paolo, why did your patch get stalled? ... my way of parsing is
> certainly way more fragile, but it's less complicated and seems to work
> as long as all the options are written in the same way in
> meson_options.txt (e.g. as long as nobody tries to use multi-line
> descriptions of the options there etc.)... so maybe if the additional
> Perl script was too much, this could be a good compromise?

IIRC while Perl is perfect for parsing, the maintenance cost is too
high. The git-forge / meson switch proved next-gen contributors are
more at ease with Python. The few contributors who are fluent with
Perl are usually very busy maintainers.