X.Org package wrangler Alan Coopersmith at Oracle announced today the release of imake 1.0.11, the newest version of this utility that 20+ years ago was used extensively as part of the X Window System build process for generating Makefiles from a template. With this first imake point release in two years, imake itself can now be built via Meson and there is now support for RISC-V and LoongArch architectures.
Over the past twenty years the still-active X11 / X Window System code has transitioned largely over to GNU Autoconf and Automake while in more recent years seeing increased Meson adoption too. But for any old X code remnants not yet adapted or wanting to build older versions of said software, imake is still needed
Maybe it’s just I’m a relative noob to build systems, but gosh, do I love Meson.
The documentation’s pretty okay - not perfect, but better than cmake - and it feels like I can actually learn it by example through looking at other projects’ setups.
I can live with using other build systems for other projects, but for personal projects, I’ll always choose Meson. I’ll always push for it if a project I’m working on needs to choose a build system.
The impression that I got from this article is that even the author of imake feels the same way, and is only maintaining it out of consideration for legacy software still using it.
Who would have thought that there would be a context in which GNU Autoconf and Automake were considered the modern way to build software?
