Hi D folks,

Over the last 2 years, significant improvements were brought to Meson to make it build D programs correctly and (rather) painlessly.
To name only a few:

• -makedeps switch was merged in the compiler frontend and supported right away by Meson. It allows ninja to track which file imports which. This is simply necessary for correct compilation without having to clean and rebuild everything each time a file is edited.

• more recently, a bug was fixed which allows to use Dub dependencies, including ones with complex sub-dependency schemes such as vibe-d. This will be available with meson-0.63 (release will probably occur in a few weeks).

There are many more fixes done by many people.
In general, Meson is easy to fix, and contributions get quickly reviewed and accepted.

Don't hesitate to try it out and to share your thoughts!

Cheers,
Rémi

On Thursday, 12 May 2022 at 21:37:20 UTC, Remi Thebault wrote:

Nice! That should have been posted on announce group.

Is there any d-related link?

Andrea

On Friday, 13 May 2022 at 22:00:54 UTC, Andrea Fontana wrote:

https://mesonbuild.com/D.html

On Thursday, 12 May 2022 at 21:37:20 UTC, Remi Thebault wrote:

Could you write a little summary of this work so that we can show it off on the dlang blog?

On Sunday, 15 May 2022 at 16:44:28 UTC, max haughton wrote:

Support for D in Meson started in 2017.
I didn't follow all progresses made since then so I can only speak about my own contributions (which started by end of 2020):

• DMD and LDC -makedeps switch, supported right away by Meson. It allows ninja to track which file imports which. This is simply necessary for correct compilation without having to clean and rebuild everything each time a file is edited.
• Fixed some glitches to pass the right arguments to the compiler
• Fixed -J switch search path to include generated files. Allows to generate files with Meson and import them in the D code. Useful e.g. to generate SPIR-V files during the build and import them on the fly.
• Fixed RSP (@file switch) syntax on Windows. Allows to support long command lines, often necessary for linking.
• Fixed Dub dependencies. Now Meson will correctly use the Dub libraries including those with sub-dependencies. Dub libraries must still be built by Dub for the right compiler/build type/configuration. If one is missing, Meson will correctly detect it and print the command to be run to install the missing libraries.
• Support d_module_versions and d_import_dirs (for -J switch) in declare_dependency. Allows propagation of these build options to depending libraries or programs.
• Support some D compiler checks during Meson configuration. Supports e.g. meson.get_compiler('d').sizeof('void*') to check at configure time if code is generated for 32bit or 64bit.

Things work best with static libraries. Dynamic libraries do not receive much testing, and are a known caveat in D in general.
Besides this and starting on version 0.63, Meson is ready to support most build scenarios for real world D programs without glitch.

On Thursday, 12 May 2022 at 21:37:20 UTC, Remi Thebault wrote:

Hey this handy. I've been looking for a "make install" option for vibe.d, looks like meson provides that, will check it out very soon.

Thanks for posting here, I wouldn't have known about it otherwise.

On Thursday, 12 May 2022 at 21:37:20 UTC, Remi Thebault wrote:

Hi Remi

Thanks for all your work! Here's my first attempt to use meson below. It's probably obvious that I need to read more instructions. So meson itself seems to run okay, but trying to build vibe.d with gcc-12.1 which isn't working out so well. I'm pressing a lot of new things to work together below so I'm not surprised something broke.

By the way, the goal is to produce a vibe-d shared-object + "headers" that I can use in an air-gapped build system for an upcoming project. Worked somewhat, but I wasn't able to build vibe.d using meson. The path taken:

Install GDC-12.1

wget http://mirrors.concertpass.com/gcc/releases/gcc-12.1.0/gcc-12.1.0.tar.xz
... # Bunch of config + compile commands resulting in gdc living under
    # /usr/local/gcc12

Install newest meson

$ git clone git@github.com:mesonbuild/meson.git
$ cd meson pip3 install .
$ which meson
/home/USER/.local/bin/meson

So far so good

Build vibe.d using gcc-12.1

$ git clone git@github.com:vibe-d/vibe.d.git
$ cd vibe.d
$ export LD_RUN_PATH=/usr/local/gcc12/lib64
$ export PATH=/usr/local/gcc12/bin:$PATH
$ meson setup builddir
$ env DC=/usr/local/gcc12/bin/gdc-12 meson setup builddir

Which produces...

The Meson build system
Version: 0.62.99
Source dir: /home/cwp/git/vibe.d
Build dir: /home/cwp/git/vibe.d/builddir
Build type: native build
Project name: Vibe.d
Project version: 0.9.5
D compiler for the host machine: /usr/local/gcc12/bin/gdc-12 (gcc 12.1.0 "gdc-12 (GCC) 12.1.0")
D linker for the host machine: /usr/local/gcc12/bin/gdc-12 ld.bfd 2.34
Host machine cpu family: x86_64
Host machine cpu: x86_64
Found pkg-config: /usr/bin/pkg-config (0.29.1)
Run-time dependency zlib found: YES 1.2.11
Run-time dependency libcrypto found: YES 1.1.1f
Run-time dependency libssl found: YES 1.1.1f
Found CMake: /usr/bin/cmake (3.22.1)
WARNING: CMake Toolchain: Failed to determine CMake compilers state
Run-time dependency diet found: NO (tried pkgconfig and cmake)
Looking for a fallback subproject for the dependency diet

Executing subproject diet

diet| Project name: Diet-NG
diet| Project version: 1.7.4
diet| D compiler for the host machine: /usr/local/gcc12/bin/gdc-12 (gcc 12.1.0 "gdc-12 (GCC) 12.1.0")
diet| D linker for the host machine: /usr/local/gcc12/bin/gdc-12 ld.bfd 2.34

lib/subprojects/diet/meson.build:55:0: ERROR: Unknown method "unittest_args" in object <[CompilerHolder] holds [GnuDCompiler]: <GnuDCompiler: v12.1.0 `/usr/local/gcc12/bin/gdc-12`>> of type CompilerHolder.

I've never used meson before, so the actions above are likely very naive.