Hi Eli
Thanks for this, it's useful to know how meson works with Visual Studio
On 26/09/2024 17:04, Eli Schwartz wrote:
On 9/26/24 9:55 AM, Phillip Wood wrote:
One thing to bear in mind is why our CMakeLists.txt was introduced in
the first place [1]. Visual Studio's CMake integration means that so
long as git-for-windows is installed building git is simply a case of
clicking on a button, there is no need to install extra software or
plugins. I'm not sure the same is true for meson and I don't think we
want to end up supporting both.
I can't really offer suggestions on what may or may not come
preinstalled in Visual Studio. That thread does suggest the major
problem cmake was trying to solve is:
- having to install the git-for-windows sdk at all (is it still
necessary? I guess so, because POSIX shell and perl and mingw
runtimes. Unsure how either meson or cmake could solve this.)
If you've got git-for-windows installed then it has the POSIX and perl
bits that are required to run git and the CMake build uses those and
downloads any libraries it needs with vcpkg so you don't need the sdk.
- people who are *unfamiliar with the command line and want a GUI*
Meson has a trivially installable VS Code plugin that is supposed to
handle setting up the project for you. You can generate either ninja
projects or Visual Studio solutions. "One may need to install a plugin"
is hopefully not as big a barrier to entry as "install a bunch of stuff
then go to a shell and run make vcxproj". Is the criteria truly "must be
one button click"?
Personally I think so long as there is a simple way to build git without
resorting to the command line that should be fine. It sounds like that's
the case with meson.
[...]
Stuff like "how painful is it for a Windows contributor to set up an SDK
and then also go mess around with Makefile targets and then load the
result into their IDE" is an interesting discussion to have but not
quite the same as saying "go to the marketplace and install such and
such plugin" is an obstacle.
Agreed
Best Wishes
Phillip
