[llvm-dev] Contributing Bazel BUILD files similar to gn

[Stefan Teleman via llvm-dev]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 7:16 PM David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com> wrote:

> I expect most of it is probably a statement free of value judgments: Some other projects chose to use it/some folks have to use it for other reasons, clearly there's enough use that it's motivated folks to have/maintain Bazel builds for LLVM for years. Rather than judging their choices as bad/lesser/wrong - might be useful to accept that some folks had their reasons and they're trying to make the most of the situation. I don't think anyone's making an argument that LLVM should switch to Bazel/that that would be better than the CMake we're using, and I think it's helpful to return the favor and not suggest that other projects would be better off switching to CMake over Bazel - they no doubt have their reasons.

Please do not manufacture statements that I did not make. I never
suggested, or stated, anywhere, that some other imaginary project
using Bazel should switch to CMake.

I did state that I do not find Bazel to be a better alternative to
CMake. My statement is based on direct experience with both.

If the intent behind Bazel is not to present it as a better
alternative to CMake, then what is the intent? Instead of maintaining
this impenetrable mystery as to why a Bazel build system should be
included in LLVM, please take the time to advocate for Bazel with
technical facts, than "someone at Google really likes it".

Just because someone likes and maintains an alternative build system
for LLVM, somewhere, that does not automatically mean, or imply that
it should be upstreamed.

For all I know, someone might be building their fork of LLVM with
autoconf. I am sure they have their own very good reasons for doing
so. Should we, therefore, bring back autoconf?

Thanks.

-- 
Stefan Teleman
stefan.teleman at gmail.com