Hello everyone,
I conducted an experiment in building Inkscape with Waf, redoing the work I did a long time ago with a newer version (1.7.15) and using more of its features. A correct build of Inkscape, with internal libraries built separately, "inklib" built as a shared library, Bazaar revision fetching and .po file compilation, requires less than 250 lines of Python script (!!!).
I read on some mailing lists that Debian refused to package some software using Waf, because Debian considers shipping the "Waf binary" to be incompatible with the DFSG. I circumvented this problem by adding the Waf source distribution to the tree, which is a little bigger, but DFSG-compliant and works exactly the same.
The code will be up shortly at lp:~tweenk/inkscape/waf-build, if anyone wants to check it out.
Regards, Krzysztof