Re: [PATCH RFC server 01/11] vfio-user: build library

[John Levon]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 04:20:13PM +0400, Marc-André Lureau wrote:

> > >> +  libvfiouser = static_library('vfiouser',
> > >> +                               build_by_default: false,
> > >> +                               sources: vfiouser_files,
> > >> +                               dependencies: json_c,
> > >> +                               include_directories: vfiouser_inc)
> >
> >     This way appears to be present convention with QEMU - I’m also not
> > very clear
> > on the reason for it.
> >
> > I’m guessing it’s because QEMU doesn’t build all parts of a submodule. For
> > example, QEMU only builds libfdt in the doc submodule. Similarly,
> > libvfio-user only builds the core library without building the tests and
> > samples.
> >
> You can give subproject options to build limited parts.
> 
> Fwiw, since libvfio-user uses cmake, we may be able to use meson
> cmake.subproject() (https://mesonbuild.com/CMake-module.html).

That'd be great. We also briefly discussed moving away from cmake anyway - since
both SPDK and qemu are meson-based, it seems like it would make sense. I'd
prefer it to be easy to regularly update libvfio-user within these projects.

Ideally, running qemu tests would actually run libvfio-user tests too, for some
level of assurance on the library's internal expectations.

regards
john