[Feature request] Add meson compile command

[TheQwertiest]

Proposal:
Backend-agnostic build command meson compile - counterpart of cmake --build.

Reasoning:

• Simplifies meson usage and integration: the same meson commands could be invoked for all backends.
• Reduces the amount of knowledge required to use meson out-of-the-box (i.e. with default ninja backend). Since user won't have to know anything about ninja (apart from the fact that it's needed).

Proposed interface (based on `cmake --build):

usage: meson compile [-h] [-C WD] [--clean] [--backend-args ARGS] [args [args ...]]

positional arguments:
  args                            optional list of targets to build

optional arguments:
-h, --help                      show this help message and exit
-C WD                          directory to cd into before running
--clean                          invokes clean command of the native tool.
--backend-args ARGS    arguments to pass to the native tool.

[TheQwertiest]

Note: most of the implementation code might be directly lifted from the test runner:

meson/run_tests.py

Line 211 in d8faf9b

def get_backend_commands(backend, debug=False):

[xclaesse]

Makes sense to me, we added 'meson install' recently too. Are you working on a patch?

[TheQwertiest]

Replaced --target with positional [args] for consistency with meson test and meson install.

[TheQwertiest]

Are you working on a patch?

Not yet, since my free time is currently pretty lacking. I will, however, take this on if nobody starts working on it in the next month or so (that is, a month from now, not the next calendar month :P).

[marc-h38]

As the person developing the meson.build file itself, I would also like to have a single command meson setup_and_compile --wipe_ignore_missing. Would save writing wrapper scripts on top of meson (on top of ninja). See #6434 (comment)

And a poney.

[Salamandar]

meson build would make more sense IMHO. Meson does not always compile (if you have a project with only installed files, and a python-only project when it will be supported, i.e).

[xclaesse]

meson build would make more sense IMHO. Meson does not always compile (if you have a project with only installed files, and a python-only project when it will be supported, i.e).

The reason we picked 'compile' is because 'meson build' is too common to use 'build' as build directory.

[TheQwertiest]

^ What he said =)
Quote from IRC discussion:

jpakkane: The "correct" solution would be to add a new command "meson compile" that does all the magic and call that. (It can't be called "meson build" because that is in common use for creating a build dir.)

[marc-h38]

The documentation should be adjusted accordingly https://mesonbuild.com/Overview.html#terminology

Meson follows the overall structure of other popular build systems, such as CMake and GNU Autotools. This means that the build is divided into two discrete steps: configure step and build step.

(... because that is in common use for creating a build dir.)

Curious where.

[xclaesse]

(... because that is in common use for creating a build dir.)

Curious where.

GStreamer CI for instance: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gst-ci/-/blob/master/gitlab/ci_template.yml#L120

[marc-h38]

Thanks @xclaesse for the example, I totally forgot about the potential collision between command names and parameters. The lack of command defaulting to setup always felt weird to me; but now I know why :-)