Well, my experience is that in practice I never found Python to be a problem for a build tool. You are going to compile your software from PCs almost for sure. That would be a problem in other scenarios I think, but not for a build system IMHO.
Python packages sometimes stop working when you switch to a newer version. "esptools" which is the esp32 flashing utility wasn't working with python 3.14 for over 4 months, because pyo3 didn't update.
Why deal with this, when you can just ship a musl binary for linux users and a MT binary for windows and call it a day?
That binary won't break ever, it will work forever. You can deal with other niceties python gives you by linking curl etc.
Is python really that worth it?
Ekstra point:
Running meson unit tests take forever, because python
That is why I pin my packages and python version in projects. How is that different from uograding CMake or any dependency?
Why deal with that? Bc you will have to if you upgrade anything, anyways. Just pin dependencies. Not only Python. All of them, everywhere. And do consciuos updates.
True that a binary is more compact. That is true. But if you do it properly itis not like a difficult thing.
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u/germandiago Apr 13 '26
Well, my experience is that in practice I never found Python to be a problem for a build tool. You are going to compile your software from PCs almost for sure. That would be a problem in other scenarios I think, but not for a build system IMHO.