Since debhelper/11.2.1[1], we now support using cmake for configure and ninja for build + test as an alternative to cmake for configure and make for build + test. This change was proposed by Kyle Edwards in Debian bug #895044. You can try this new combination by specifying “cmake+ninja” as build system.
To facilitate this change, the cmake and meson debhelper buildsystems had to change their (canonical) name. As such you may have noticed that the “–list” option for dh_auto_* now produces a slightly different output:
$ dh_auto_configure --list | grep + cmake+makefile CMake (CMakeLists.txt) combined with simple Makefile cmake+ninja CMake (CMakeLists.txt) combined with Ninja (build.ninja) meson+ninja Meson (meson.build) combined with Ninja (build.ninja)
You might also notice that “cmake” and “meson” is no longer listed in the full list of build systems. To retain backwards compatibility, the names “cmake” and “meson” are handled as “cmake+makefile” and “meson+ninja”. This can be seen if we specify a build system:
$ dh_auto_configure --buildsystem cmake --list | tail -n1 Specified: cmake+makefile (default for cmake) $ dh_auto_configure --buildsystem cmake+makefile --list | tail -n1 Specified: cmake+makefile $ dh_auto_configure --buildsystem cmake+ninja --list | tail -n1 Specified: cmake+ninja
If your package uses cmake, please give it a try and see what works and what does not. So far, the only known issue is that cmake+ninja may fail if the package has no tests while it success with cmake+makefile. I believe this is because the makefile build system checks whether the “test” or “check” targets exist before calling make.
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Footnotes:
[1] Strictly speaking, it was version 11.2. However, version 11.2 had a severe regression that made it mostly useless.
