Re: Switching to Waf instead of SCons?

[Graham Percival]

On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 06:13:34PM +0200, John Mandereau wrote:
> If we decide to adopt this, my plan is to develop Waf scripts for what I
> know best and sucks most in our current build system: the documentation
> (including the future web site).  Building the binary program would be
> dealt with later, and at the end it would still be possible and easy to
> build the docs (even on Windows) without building LilyPond.  With this
> plan, makefiles and wafscripts would cohabite for a while (probably for
> one or two years, given my available time).

For the record (as discussed in private email), I'm quite
concerned about waf's relative new-ness and occasional lack of
development.  My preference would be to use a stable, widely used
build system, since any problems in the build system can cause a
huge problem to developers.  That said, lilypond *does* have a
history of pushing the edge, both in terms of libraries, but also
with git.  So I guess that waf would fit nicely in that.  :)

The most important two factors, in my mind, are "how interested
are you?" (very interested), and "will you have enough time to
finish it?".  I'm not so concerned about using waf for everything,
but do you think you can get the docs using waf before you become
busy again?

I absolutely do not want to have a half-completed switch to waf
for documentation.  If somebody is interested in it and is willing
to spend time working with the waf developers, great!  I think the
texi2html work last year was very useful, both for us and
texi2html.  But I don't want to end up fumbling around in waf
because no active developers are familiar with it.

Cheers,
- Graham