Re: 01/01: build-system/meson: Really skip the 'fix-runpath' phase on armhf.

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Mark H Weaver <address@hidden> skribis:

> Marius Bakke <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

>> I'm sorry, I forgot to address your actual concerns.  The (buggy)
>> workaround was put in place and discussed in
>> <https://bugs.gnu.org/30761>.  The meat of it can be found in (guix
>> build-system meson):
>>
>>     ;; XXX PatchELF fails to build on armhf, so we skip
>>     ;; the 'fix-runpath' phase there for now.  It is used
>>     ;; to avoid superfluous entries in RUNPATH as described
>>     ;; in <https://bugs.gnu.org/28444#46>, so armhf may now
>>     ;; have different runtime dependencies from other arches.
>
> Thanks for this, but I'd still like to know the answer to my questions:
> "What does the [fix-runpath] phase accomplish, and how will armhf users
> be disadvantaged by the removal of that phase?"

As discussed in <https://bugs.gnu.org/31970> and
<https://bugs.gnu.org/31974>, Meson does not (or did not) adjust
RUNPATHs upon installation (contrary to what Libtool does, for
instance.)

Consequently, the RUNPATH is left with /tmp/guix-build-… entries, which
is not great but okay, but more importantly if usually lacks OUTPUT/lib
as well.

However, the commit Marius referred to¹ as well as what you reported for
Epiphany in #31974 suggest that things are improving in Meson proper,
and that we might be able to remove that ‘fix-runpath’ phase altogether
soon.

I think we should simply try building things without ‘fix-runpath’ and
see if ‘validate-runpath’ reports anything.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.

¹ 
https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/commit/e3757e3d3cf24327c89dd3fc40f6cc933510f676