On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 10:51 AM brian m. carlson <sandals@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 2025-07-12 at 17:26:15, Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón wrote: > > Makefile requires the user to provide the USE_LIBPCRE2 flag to > > enable this dependency, but meson has it enabled by default, > > which can be problematic, at least in macOS. > > > > While a popular option and matching what was done by cmake > > (which itself reflects what is preferred by Git for Windows) > > could result in a broken build or linking with the wrong PCRE2 > > library. > > > > While not git's fault, macOS provides a PCRE2 library in base > > that is not usable (even if it would pass the test) and not > > configured properly, as it installs a pkgconf module that > > points to a non existent pcre2.h header in /usr/local/include. > > > > Change the default to off, and let the user enable it once a > > proper dependency is installed or meson instructed to fallback to > > the wrap. > > Can we disable it by default on macOS instead of everywhere? Yes, but I don't like it much, as it is: * inconsistent with artifacts created with other build systems * really an issue that should be fixed by Apple or at least handled better in meson itself. > For most > builds on Linux, the system libpcre2 is the right one and users will > expect to find PCRE support by default. Agree with you on that, and indeed I think every packager of git (except for NonStop) does enable it at packaging time. Maybe this is an argument to enable it by default?, one thing that I wonder though, is if we should first isolate the code on its own and link it only with `git grep`. I think the rationale behind the current setup was that we will eventually replace all other regex engines with PCRE2, having better performance and retiring compat/regex, but code to do that failed to materialise, and I am not sure how realistic that was. Carlo > -- > brian m. carlson (they/them) > Toronto, Ontario, CA
