On 10/13/25 05:29, jijinbei wrote:
Dear LibreOffice developers and contributors,
I recently openedBug 168776 <https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/
show_bug.cgi?id=168776> (https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/
show_bug.cgi?id=168776 <https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/
show_bug.cgi?id=168776>) to propose migrating the LibreOffice build
system from Make, autotools, and Perl to *Bazel*.
In the discussion there, I was advised to bring this topic to this
mailing list for broader feedback and discussion.
I believe such a migration could bring several benefits and
simplifications, including:
*
*Incremental Builds:* Bazel can significantly reduce compilation
time compared to the current Make-based system.
The current system already does builds incrementally.
*Modern Build Language:* Legacy Perl scripts could be replaced by
the modern, Python-like Starlark language.
I think the wording should be "legacy Perl and awk scripts *have to be*
replaced" and this is the same requirement as for Meson.
Have you evaluated Meson against Bazel for LibreOffice? There has
already been a significant amount of work done in making LibreOffice
build on Meson and this included rewriting many Perl scripts in Python.
One part of this was creating a WiX-based Windows installer (not yet in
production).
There is inertia in continuing the build system migration because the
current autoconf-based system is one of the cleanest implementations you
will find in any project, works fine and the maintenance is not really a
burden. So the benefits of moving to something else are not that
significant.
Support was added recently for building HarfBuzz with Meson and the long
process revealed some problematic things and assumptions in Meson
itself, mainly on Windows if I recall correctly. Probably there would be
an equal amount of surprising problems in Bazel.
Ilmari
