Automake is hindering implementing new features

[kevemueller]

While implementing the draft #78 I have stumbled over the arcane automake configuration. In fact atf using automake hinders implementing making fundamental changes, like the introduction of sanitizers due to the uncertainty of whether a change has side-effects or not.

I propose for atf to upgrade to a modern build system, e.g. Meson Build.

This issue is raised to start the discussion of implications and test if a pull introducing Meson would possibly succeed to get merged.

[ngie-eign]

This isn't as easy as you might hope. Instead of doing this piecemeal starting from the bottom (atf -> lutok -> kyua), this really needs to be driven from the top down (kyua -> lutok -> atf), given that there are m4 files distributed with atf/lutok which will need to be converted to equivalent build logic, regardless of the build system.
re: meson... I'm still more of a fan of cmake because it's more widely adopted and the cmake toolset doesn't require python to build (it requires python to build it, but doesn't rely on python once it's been built).

[bapt]

if we are in the trolls you can build meson without python using muon ;)