Horton

Re: [RFC] building postgres with meson

Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>

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From: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com>
Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Date: 2021-10-12T16:15:41Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Hi,

On 2021-10-12 15:30:57 +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> I played with $subject a few years ago and liked it.  I think, like you
> said, meson is the best way forward.  I support this project.

Cool.


> One problem I noticed back then was that some choices that we currently
> determine ourselves in configure or the makefiles are hardcoded in meson.

Yea, there's some of that. I think some degree of reduction in flexibility is
needed to realistically target multiple "backend" build-system like visual
studio project files etc. but I wish there were a bit less of that
nonetheless.


> For example, at the time, gcc on macOS was not supported.  Meson thought, if
> you are on macOS, you are surely using the Apple compiler, and it supports
> these options.

I'm pretty sure this one now can just be overridden with CC=gcc. It can on
linux and windows, but I don't have ready interactive access with a mac
(leaving cirrus asside, which now has a "start a terminal" option...).


> For example, the shared library build behavior has been carefully tuned in
> opinionated ways.  With the autotools chain, one can override anything with
> enough violence; so we have always felt free to do that. I haven't followed
> it in a while, so I don't know what the situation is now; but it is a
> concern, because we have always felt free to try new and unusual build tools
> (Sun compiler, Intel compiler, clang-when-it-was-new) early without waiting
> for anyone else.

It's possible to just take over building e.g. shared libraries ourselves with
custom targets. Although it'd be a bit annoying to do. The bigger problem is
that that e.g. wouldn't play that nicely with generating visual studio
projects, which require to generate link steps in a certain way. It'd build,
but the GUI might loose some of its options. Etc.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

Commits

  1. meson: Add 'running' test setup, as a replacement for installcheck

  2. meson: Add support for building with precompiled headers

  3. windows: Adjust FD_SETSIZE via commandline define

  4. meson: docs: Add xml{lint,proc} wrapper to collect dependencies

  5. meson: ecpg: Split definition of static and shared libraries

  6. windows: Set UMDF_USING_NTSTATUS globally, include ntstatus.h

  7. ci: Add hint about downloadable logs to README

  8. meson: Set up absolute rpaths to libdir

  9. meson: Include CFLAGS/c_args in summary and pg_config output

  10. windows: remove date from version number in win32ver.rc

  11. meson: Add initial version of meson based build system

  12. ci: windows: set error mode to not include SEM_NOGPFAULTERRORBOX

  13. Refactor PG_TEST_EXTRA logic in autoconf build

  14. Split TESTDIR into TESTLOGDIR and TESTDATADIR

  15. Don't hardcode tmp_check/ as test directory for tap tests

  16. Extend gendef.pl in preparation for meson

  17. Include c.h instead of postgres.h in src/port/*p{read,write}*.c

  18. Remove DLLTOOL, DLLWRAP from configure / Makefile.global.in

  19. Run xmllint validation only once

  20. Bump minimum Perl version to 5.14

  21. Move gramparse.h to src/backend/parser

  22. Run perltidy over Catalog.pm

  23. Parse catalog .dat files as a whole when compiling the backend

  24. Build all Flex files standalone

  25. Move private declarations shared between guc.c and guc-file.l to new header

  26. Preparatory refactoring for compiling guc-file.c standalone

  27. Move darwin sysroot determination into separate file

  28. Fix MSVC warning in compat_informix/rnull.pgc

  29. solaris: Use versioning scripts instead of -Bsymbolic

  30. Change shared library installation naming on macOS

  31. regress: allow to specify directory containing expected files, for ecpg

  32. Don't add HAVE_LDAP_H HAVE_WINLDAP_H to pg_config.h

  33. Refactor dtrace postprocessing make rules

  34. Add output directory option to gen_node_support.pl

  35. Add output directory argument to generate-unicode_norm_table.pl

  36. Add output file argument to generate-errcodes.pl

  37. Add output path arg in generate-lwlocknames.pl

  38. Move snowball_create.sql creation into perl file

  39. ecpg: Output dir, source dir, stamp file argument for preproc/*.pl

  40. psql: Output dir and dependency generation for sql_help

  41. Deal with paths containing \ and spaces in basebackup_to_shell tests

  42. Remove LLVM_CONFIG from Makefile.global.in

  43. Make update-unicode target work in vpath builds

  44. Refactor DLSUFFIX handling

  45. ldap tests: Add paths for openbsd.

  46. ldap tests: Don't run on unsupported operating systems.

  47. Remove check for accept() argument types

  48. Move our p{read,write}v replacements into their own files.

  49. Adjust yywrap macro for non-reentrant scanners for MSVC.

  50. Remove any -arch switches given in ExtUtils::Embed's ldopts from our

  51. Change PL/Perl and Pg interface build to use configured compiler and

  52. Apparently, on some systems, ExtUtils::Embed and MakeMaker are slightly