mesonbuild / mesonbuild/meson

Feature: Accessing dependency compile flags etc from meson.build

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Description

Hi,

For several custom targets I need to pass the -I flags necessary to parse some C sources (for various code generation purposes). Unfortunately it looks like there is no way to access compilation flags of dependencies from within meson.build, as Dependency.get_variable() unfortunately doesn't seems to allow accessing Dependency.compile_args.

I can implement a hacky workaround by parsing meson-info/intro-dependencies.json in a postconf script, but that's pretty grotty. Or I can re-implement dependency discovery outside of meson, also not appealing.

ISTM that at least Dependency.get_compile_args(), get_all_compile_args(), get_link_args(), get_all_link_args() should be exposed to the interpreter?

Regards,

Andres

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Research direction

Start by tracing Dependency.get_variable() and how dependency methods are exposed to the meson.build interpreter. Check the existing dependency compile and link argument handling, then verify that the requested compile- and link-argument accessors are available from meson.build with appropriate coverage.

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Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
build-system
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
48/100

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