[helloiamsomeone]

> As far as I can see, the best choice for writing bootstrap-related software in 2024 is still C99

That seems a bit silly, since going from ISO C99 to C++ is only one more build away[0] and from there you can practically build the whole world as you please.

> CMake is absolutely out

Considering how hostile Meson is to platforms other than *nix[1], I doubt there is any realistic alternative here.

> I still haven’t forgiven it for deciding that the space-separated output of pkg-config meant it was a “list”, then emitting that list as a semicolon-separated string into my build commands.

I'd be curious where the issue opened by the author is, since this would be a pretty big problem if it was truly an issue. The CMake module processing the output of pkg-config is also just using an existing CMake command[2], so the impact would be greater than just pkg-config related code if there really was an issue.

[0]: https://blog.dave.tf/post/finding-bottom-turtle/

[1]: https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/issues/8153

[2]: https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/-/blob/f8ba5b12ca842c...