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We are dropping the Autotools build for GTK 3.x, and have fully switched to Meson. If you package GTK 3 and you are still using Autotools, now is the time to switch.

For more information, see the announcement on Discourse: discourse.gnome.org/t/removing…

#gtk #meson #autotools #distro #packaging

in reply to GTK

To those still wondering what kind of performance improvement Meson brings to an established project over Autotools, here are some numbers from the Yocto project after they switched their native GTK3 build recipe:

config (autotools): 38.5s
config (meson): 17.9s (-53.5%)
install (autotools): 11.2s
install (meson): 1.6s (-85.5%)
compile (autotools): 100.8s
compile (meson): 37.5s (-62.8%)

The build went from nearly 2 minutes to sub-1 minute

reshared this

in reply to GTK

For the cross-compilation build, the improvements are even more marked:

config (autotools): 55.5s
config (meson): 22.0s (-60.4%)
install (autotools): 11.6s
install (meson): 3.6s (-68.7%)
compile (autotools): 415.5s
compile (meson): 235.3s (-43.4%)

If your project is still holding on to Autotools because of sunk cost, do yourself a favour, and start looking at Meson.

mesonbuild.com