A more mature build system for PARI

[John Scott <jscott@posteo.net>]

Hi folks,

I think PARI needs a standardized and well-respected build system instead of the custom one. Right now the custom build system is inconvenient for downstream users like packagers, does not deal with corner cases like cross builds well, and needlessly introduces an extra learning curve instead of using a common solution.

I'm interested in putting in the work to convert PARI to Meson. Meson is practically a standard with multiple competing implementations, and it's very high-level, easy to learn, and designed for developers and packagers first. Of course it also supports reproducible builds, cross compilation, and has a sophisticated dependency management system that makes building for platforms like Windows without package management just a little bit easier.

If I write Meson support for PARI, would you consider merging it?

I'm writing off Autotools and CMake since they're both too complex and hard to learn; Autotools's documentation says that it's a design choice that they put the needs of projects second, instead prioritizing downstream builders. Autotools also generally entails shipping autogenerated files in your sources, which is a practice we hate in Debian since it's not truly source, and in that way it doesn't belong in a VCS.

Please let me know what you think. I look forward to possibly getting to work.