Bug 8469

Summary: Add gobject-introspection support directly to oe-core
Product: [Build System, Metadata & Runtime] OE-Core Reporter: Alexander Kanavin <alex.kanavin>
Component: coreAssignee: Alexander Kanavin <alex.kanavin>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact: Daniel Istrate <daniel.alexandrux.istrate>
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: Medium+ CC: alexandru.c.georgescu, meta.mr.watcher, meta.watcher, randy.macleod
Version: 2.1   
Target Milestone: 2.1 M4   
Hardware: x86   
OS: Multiple   
Whiteboard:
OS type for building Yocto: --- Type of Regression: ---
Verified: Documentation change: Yes (doc changes required)
Bug Depends on:    
Bug Blocks: 8640    

Description Alexander Kanavin 2015-10-09 10:00:55 UTC
The work would be based on meta-gir, but with the mandatory goal of producing patches of sufficient quality that can be sent upstream.

The upstream tarball is a mess that mashes together several different things and was never designed for cross-compiling; and meta-gir is also difficult to understand: autotools-based build files are patched using undocumented patchfiles, then again patched from the recipe using sed, with sparse or absent comments - all that needs to be sorted. I'm looking into this now, but don't yet have anything to show.
Comment 1 Randy MacLeod 2015-10-16 15:14:23 UTC
Please check with upstream before putting much work into meta-gir.
There seems to be an effort in place to fix gobject-introspection for cross-compile environment using the mesonbuild tool:
   https://blogs.gnome.org/ignatenko/2015/07/24/guadec-presentation-preview-compiling-gnome-apps-with-the-meson-build-system/

Someone needs to determine if this is actually going to happen and if it solves our x-compile problems.
Comment 2 Alexander Kanavin 2015-10-17 05:11:18 UTC
This is the upstream discussion:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=743280

What I take from it, it's not happening soon, and they're not replacing autotools with it in existing projects.

In any case, I don't see how mesonbuild would fix g-o in cross-compile environments. The link you provide says nothing about that specifically. The issue with g-o isn't the build system, it's the g-o tools themselves that need to be compiled both for native and target architectures, and then require a delicate combination of both to produce correct output.
Comment 3 Randy MacLeod 2015-10-17 15:04:54 UTC
Oh well, the impression I had was that the next version of gnome might switch to mesonbuild and that mesonbuild would help with x-compile of the poorly designed g-object-introspection code. If that's not the case then I agree with proceed with your plan. Thanks for taking the time to investigate and reply.
Comment 4 Alexander Kanavin 2015-10-17 16:29:40 UTC
No problem. I'm in the middle of making it all work, and hope to produce an initial patchset for testing and review in 5-10 working days.
Comment 5 Alexander Kanavin 2015-11-09 15:15:26 UTC
Posted the initial patchset here http://lists.openembedded.org/pipermail/openembedded-core/2015-November/112455.html
Comment 6 Alexander Kanavin 2016-03-16 13:04:34 UTC
Patches are in master!