Re: ./configure fails to link test program due to missing dependencies

From: Eli Schwartz <eschwartz@gentoo.org>
Date: Sep 30, 2024, 13:57 UTC
Message-ID: <157253c6-36f8-43ab-ad17-c6c8811bd5a9@gentoo.org>
In-Reply-To: <a43fa510-9a96-4b92-8107-0c00209d5161@gmail.com>

On 9/30/24 4:50 AM, Phillip Wood wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> We cannot expect everyone who wants to build git using meson in Visual
> Studio to read this thread and find the message that mentions installing
> a plugin. It is much more likely that they, like Johannes, will find the
> documentation on the meson website and conclude they need to run some
> commands on the commandline. That's a problem with the documentation,
> not the person reading it. Even if they do find the plugin [1] it is not
> clear that it helps - no where does it say "this enables you to build
> software with meson", instead it talks about syntax highlighting, code
> snippets and linting for meson files.

Sure. And I'm happy to (help) improve the documentation. I've already pushed a fix to the page Johannes linked, since it was many years out of date (???) and didn't reflect the fact that meson will automatically detect the Visual Studio toolset for you.

(Note that since meson will "automatically do the right thing" here, that means it is practical for a plugin to run meson under the hood for you... much like how cmake plugins handle things.)

As far as reading this thread goes, though, I assume that in such a future, people who want to build git using meson in Visual Studio would be optimally served by a slight reorganization to ./INSTALL to provide guidance on where to find meson and what plugin to use, which provides an additional entrypoint for clarification. :)

-- 
Eli Schwartz