Replace Autotools with Meson by andy128k · Pull Request #186 · mvo5/synaptic

andy128k · 2026-06-22T09:40:41Z

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amaa-99 · 2026-06-26T10:15:01Z

Hi. First of all, great work!

I had some thoughts about that too...

When replacing the Autotools with something else, wouldn't it make sense to go for something like CMake, which is widely supported by most IDEs?

Being able to easily import the project into any preferred IDE would definitely be a big plus.

Please note that CMake has integrations for Ninja and ccache too, so the build performance would be optimal too (though the synaptic project is relatively small, thus the build time is not so critical (though faster is always nice)).

andy128k · 2026-06-26T17:45:38Z

My take is: CMake is more C/C++ centric while Meson is general purpose and is widely used in Gtk/Gnome applications.

amaa-99 · 2026-07-01T07:46:46Z

Hi. I'm trying out your branch. Here's my findings so far:

Eclipse

Opening the project on eclipse (with the respective plugin installed) resulted in an inconsistent state (i.e. the IDE didn't detect the configuration correctly).

The include paths were not detected/configured correctly (I couldn't find a workaround).
Therefore the indexing and code analysis features didn't work correctly (i.e. no code completion, references tracking...).

Qt Creator

Opening and building the project on Qt Creator worked after adding the following to the executable() definitions:

implicit_include_directories: true,   # Add the build folders to the include paths so that the generated headers can be found.

However Qt creator doesn't show any of the project's header files in the project view!
That seems to be a known limitation (https://doc.qt.io/qtcreator/creator-project-meson.html):

Current Meson support limitations
The following features are not supported yet:

    Showing header files in project tree.
    Configuration change detection, for example when building triggers a Meson configuration first.
    Actions from locator such as searching or triggering builds.
    Adding files to Meson projects from Qt Creator.

General building

Building failed on my environment trying to localize the com.ubuntu.pkexec.synaptic.policy file, due to the /usr/share/gettext/its/polkit.its and polkit.loc files not being installed on the system.

To fix that I've installed the libpolkit-gobject-1-dev package and added the following to the root meson.build file (so that there's a clear error in case the dependency is missing):

# The libpolkit-gobject-1-dev package provides the /usr/share/gettext/its/polkit.its and polkit.loc files
# used by the execution of the i18n.merge_file('com.ubuntu.pkexec.synaptic.policy') command.
libpolkit_dep = dependency('polkit-gobject-1', required: true)

andy128k · 2026-07-01T19:12:57Z

@amaa-99 Thanks for testing this! I use Gnome Builder and it works w/o any issues. I've just tried to build and run tests in VS Code and it has no issues either.

implicit_include_directories is true by default and should not be needed.

polkit-gobject-1 is really needed. I added it to github action but totally forgot to add to meson.build.

Side note: if you haven't had it on your system, then how did autotools work for you? (or how does it work on github actions?) 😄

amaa-99 · 2026-07-01T20:14:00Z

I've tried VS Code too, and it seems to be the only IDE so far that was able to interpret the meson project decently enough.
Code analysis works, and so does the code completion, reference tracking and so on...
I still need to try doing a debugging session...

The Gnome Builder is also one of the few that handles the autotools nicely.
Unfortunately as a generic IDE it is (for me) not a practical option (I guess it is intended to be a specialized builder as the name implies).

About the implicit_include_directories, I guess the parsers on the project import plugins of the IDEs don't take the default values into account. On Eclipse not even that did the job.

mvo5

I like it, nice to see us moving into the more modern meson world!

I notied some things:

pre-build.sh wants to change configure.ac for version number - that needs an update (to test just run "gpb buildpackae")
Related to the above - the version: '1' is display in the about dialog. we need to somehow ensure that the version in the debian/changelog and the version in meson.build stay consistent. maybe even just extracting the changelog version into meson.build?
I think we merged some changes to autotools (like -DGDK_PIXBUF_DISABLE_DEPRECATED and -DG_DISABLE_DEPRECATED) that need to be ported over
we probably still need xmlto in the build-deps, I guess that is the reason for the if fs.exists("doc/html/C/index.html") - we want to still ship the docs :)

Lots to like otherwise, thanks for working on this!

mvo5 · 2026-07-09T16:07:28Z

-   vector<DepInformation> deps = pkg->enumDeps();
-   for(unsigned int i=0;i<deps.size();i++) {
-      cerr << "deps: " << deps[i].name << endl;
+   RPackage *pkg = lister->getPackage("build-essential");


It would be nice to know (maybe in the commit message) why this test fix is part this PR - did something with the meson conversion break the test? Or unrelated?

These test are not run by Github Actions. There is just no such action in autotools. The change to Meson actually makes them run (and fail).

mvo5 · 2026-07-09T16:08:28Z

-  ),
-  install_dir: join_paths(get_option('datadir'), 'synaptic', 'html', 'figures'),
-)
+if fs.exists('doc/html/C/index.html')


Why is this conditional now?

Actually that's not needed at all. Removed.

mvo5 · 2026-07-09T16:10:04Z

-	dh_auto_build $(DHFLAGS)
-	# ubuntu specific for universe langpacks but will not do any
-	#  harm on debian
-	make -C po synaptic.pot


IIRC we had this because in ubuntu the language packs extract ".pot" files and then feed it into their rosetta system. I wonder if we can somehow keep the behavior of generating the pot file during the build (or is that done already automatically by meson?).

It's done by Meson's i18n module https://mesonbuild.com/i18n-module.html

andy128k · 2026-07-11T15:05:01Z

@mvo5

pre-build.sh wants to change configure.ac for version number - that needs an update (to test just run "gpb buildpackae")

I was not aware of this script.

Related to the above - the version: '1' is display in the about dialog. we need to somehow ensure that the version in the debian/changelog and the version in meson.build stay consistent. maybe even just extracting the changelog version into meson.build?

Version is fixed. But shouldn't this be vise versa? Changelog should be base on the code and version, not opposite,

I think we merged some changes to autotools (like -DGDK_PIXBUF_DISABLE_DEPRECATED and -DG_DISABLE_DEPRECATED) that need to be ported over

GgkPixbuf is deprecated itself. So it will be reported anyway.

we probably still need xmlto in the build-deps, I guess that is the reason for the if fs.exists("doc/html/C/index.html") - we want to still ship the docs :)

Actually no. There is nothing to ship.

andy128k force-pushed the meson branch 7 times, most recently from 39b21b6 to ea0e581 Compare June 22, 2026 19:27

andy128k force-pushed the meson branch 2 times, most recently from edd66a9 to 4c46edb Compare July 1, 2026 07:30

andy128k force-pushed the meson branch from 4c46edb to 00b9dfa Compare July 1, 2026 18:59

andy128k force-pushed the meson branch 3 times, most recently from 3296d42 to 656ff29 Compare July 5, 2026 23:37

andy128k marked this pull request as ready for review July 5, 2026 23:43

andy128k force-pushed the meson branch 2 times, most recently from f06d9c4 to 007e267 Compare July 6, 2026 08:54

mvo5 mentioned this pull request Jul 6, 2026

Add an option to put the application path definitions in the config.h (with default values) #212

Merged

andy128k force-pushed the meson branch from 007e267 to d61f9da Compare July 7, 2026 13:08

mvo5 reviewed Jul 9, 2026

View reviewed changes

andy128k added 4 commits July 11, 2026 16:58

build: replace autotools with meson

d533349

Update github action to use Meson

7ad3b24

Fix a test

3e650f7

debian: switch packaging to meson

5d17de9

andy128k force-pushed the meson branch from d61f9da to 5d17de9 Compare July 11, 2026 14:58

Update pre-build.sh to modify meson.build

fecc84e

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