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#Meson needs to learn that Linux is not an operating system unto itself.
No really, like 95% checks for host_machine.system() == 'linux' are wrong, unless you really care about *kernel* specifics like Linux kernel modules. Typically what you want to check is:
- is my compiler GCC / Clang? (use the Meson compiler object for that!)
- is my libc (a recent enough) glibc?
- does this system use a "freedesktop" GUI stack?
- etc etc
![have_ld_preload = ['linux', 'freebsd', 'darwin', 'dragonfly'].contains(host_machine.system())
(from cairo/meson.build)
because surely glibc's ld.so checks which kernel it's running on, and only enables LD_PRELOAD if running on Linux, right?](https://cdn.masto.host/floss/media_attachments/files/110/712/615/648/681/863/original/b312c6dd31e3361a.png "have_ld_preload = ['linux', 'freebsd', 'darwin', 'dragonfly'].contains(host_machine.system())
(from cairo/meson.build)
because surely glibc's ld.so checks which kernel it's running on, and only enables LD_PRELOAD if running on Linux, right?")
![# Linker flags
if host_machine.system() == 'linux'
common_ldflags += cc.get_supported_link_arguments([ '-Wl,-Bsymbolic', '-Wl,-z,relro', '-Wl,-z,now', ])
endif
(from pango/meson.build)
Because surely only Linux builds deserve security features like relro!](https://cdn.masto.host/floss/media_attachments/files/110/712/627/017/752/263/original/419a9eb4375a003a.png "# Linker flags
if host_machine.system() == 'linux'
common_ldflags += cc.get_supported_link_arguments([ '-Wl,-Bsymbolic', '-Wl,-z,relro', '-Wl,-z,now', ])
endif
(from pango/meson.build)
Because surely only Linux builds deserve security features like relro!")
Which is the rather typical issue of most developers being awful at system integration.
@lanodan Meson users too should be aware of this and use it properly, but Meson shouldn't have made it that easy to misuse this.
Like ugh, why didn't they make machine.kernel() and machine.userland() (would return "linux"/"gnu", "linux"/"android", "freebsd"/"freebsd", "freebsd"/"gnu", "xnu"/"darwin")
I think they should have exposed something like the target triple and dedicated functions for each part of it, plus matching on the compiler/linker/… being used (you can mix-match there).
@lanodan yes, target triple + some sane (i.e. not just a regex) API to match against it would also be good. And yes "GNU" is problematic for that reason, and also I have no idea what to call the various non-GNU userlands seen on Linux in the wild (as seen in: Alpine, Chimera Linux, OpenWrt...) — just calling each one by its own name is not going to be any useful.
Maybe we should file an issue and write a proposal over at Meson's issue tracker.
You should always do clean atomic detections based on exactly what you want to use.
Just like how Unix doesn't means X11 or that the entirety of freedesktop stuff is present.
Heck, Android could gain wayland support at some point.