From: Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2025 09:13:22 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] meson: add support for 'headers-check'
Message-ID: <CAOLa=ZTRAQJjYU2cvxOw=tmCkQH7CLm027B5ZkGSg10qdGQENg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqsemiuwhx.fsf@gitster.g>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

> Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> The Makefile supports a target called 'hdr-check', which checks if
>> individual header files can be independently compiled. Let's port this
>> functionality to meson, our new build system too.
>
> Good goal.
>
>> Let's avoid the abbreviation and name the target 'headers-check', which
>> is easier to read.
>
> This is a bit dubious.  Are developers supposed to keep track of
> correspondence between the long establish name and the new name this
> patch just came up with?  For how long?
>

Fair enough.

> If we make it one of our goals to name the build target in
> pronounceable ways, that is perfectly fine, and it would be a good
> task to allow "make headers-check" be a synonym for "make hdr-check"
> (and do the same on the meson side), and deprecate hdr-check in a
> cycle or two (this is not end-user facing, so the transition period
> can legitimately be much shorter than usual.
>
> But we still need to have some transition period to help those who
> build from the source adjust their set-ups that have called "make
> hdr-check" for a long time.

Well put. My intention was that anyone using meson will anyways have to
change from `make <target>` to `meson compile <target>`. So they
wouldn't mind <target> changing too.

But it would be nicer to keep both the old target and the new
replacement and eventually remove the old target. Will do that and send
in a new version.