Meson

[thorstenhater]

Trial use of meson to build Arbor. There are some known problems/missing feature, but you can try
this preview today. Depending on the feedback, the mesonic lodge™ will polish this branch and make
it the default.

⚠️ Please be quick, since this will bitrot quite fast otherwise.

Quick start

# in arbor
pip install meson ninja
mkdir mbuild
cd mbuild
meson -Darb_with_bundled_libs=true -Darb_with_python=true
# runs all tests
ninja test

Missing/Todo

• port CI
• port pip install
• a-b-c uses meson

[brenthuisman]

Excellent!

But. Python is going to make merging this difficult. The Meson support status of the various components in the Python build are:

• Scikit-build: wont implement.
• Meson Python build backend (which could be used in Pyproject.toml): not implemented yet.
• Third party Python build backend: we'd depend on a hobby project it looks like, and have to accept a small explosion in dependencies.

The latter is the only option as far as I can establish, but I think that may simply be too premature.

[brenthuisman]

Small update as of today: meson-python seems to work, but will not be merged into meson proper in current form: mesonbuild/meson#7863 (comment)