If you call the release script with --dev-build it sets both opt_nopackage and opt_devbuild to 1 which means we don't enter either of these if conditions since they require 0
opt_strip=
if [ $opt_devbuild -eq 0 ]; then
opt_strip=--strip
fi
if [ $opt_nopackage -eq 0 ]; then
package
fi
In the first one we setup opt_strip to be empty and since we don't enter the if condition we don't set it to --strip right afterwards which means we won't strip the dll's and will be larger because of all the symbols. Another if condition further down is also skipped which means we also don't clean up our temporary build folders and files.
If we instead supply --no-package we don't set opt_devbuild to 1 and therefor enter the two if conditions associated and now tell the script we both want to strip the dll's and also clean up the temporary files and folders.
Giving the script no options does the same and in addition doesn't set opt_nopackage to 1 making the script enter the second if condition shown above that enters a function which will go ahead and package up the final files in a archive and delete them afterwards.
So TLDR the script will avoid stripping the files if --dev-build is used making them larger.
TL;DR the option literally only exists because I'm lazy. It's what I use to set up my build environment whenever Meson throws a fit (usually due to version incompatibilities).
what tweaks do you have in mind? where do you see untapped potential?
Nothing extracted yet.
What "--dev-build" option does?
It makes the DLLs smaller?
I see in the code it adds "--strip" to Meson, which this option it should make the DLLs smaller if I remember right from how GoLang options work for his compiler.