[debhelper-devel] Bug#879658: debhelper's meson build system deletes the crossfile too early

[Helmut Grohne]

Package: debhelper
Version: 10.10.3
User: helmutg at debian.org
Usertags: rebootstrap
Owner: niels at thykier.net

Hi Niels,

this is the friendly reminder and summary following our irc discussion.
It turned out that debhelper's meson build system does not yet work for
cross compilation as can be seen when cross compiling systemd in
unstable at the moment.

dh_auto_build calls ninja, which calls "meson --internal regenerate",
which fails with "File not found: /tmp/meson-cross-file.0Cl4.conf." It
seems to expect the presence of the cross file during dh_auto_build (and
likely also dh_auto_install). In my poc patch for systemd[1], I simply
dumped the crossfile to the debian directory and never deleted it. That
worked.

Thank you for handling the issue.

Helmut

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?att=1;bug=859177;filename=systemd_234-2.1.debdiff;msg=42