meson doesn't recognize custom harfbuzz 10.1.0 build

[lucebac]

Describe the bug Hi all! I'm currently (unsuccessfully) trying to build freetype with harfbuzz enabled. The chain of compilation, because of a circular dependency, is said to be as follow: 1) freetype without harfbuzz support 2) harfbuzz with freetype from (1) 3) freetype with harfbuzz from (2)

This should result in a freetype build which is linked to harfbuzz with freetype support enabled. However, I'm stuck at step 3 because meson doesn't recognize the harfbuzz build from (2) - at least not fully. According to the build output after a lot of fiddling around with --cmake-prefix-path and --pkg-config-path, harfbuzz is generally detected but meson is unable to retrieve the version.

I'm trying to build freetype-2.13.3 with harfbuzz 10.1.0, both of which from their official source releases of the given versions (links below).

To Reproduce 1) Grab the releases of freetype and harfbuzz:

• https://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/freetype/freetype-2.13.3.tar.gz
• https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/releases/download/10.1.0/harfbuzz-10.1.0.tar.xz 2) build freetype without harfbuzz support first meson setup build --prefix e:\dev\meson_debug\output\freetype, then ninja install from build folder 3) build harfbuzz with freetype support: meson setup build --prefix e:\dev\meson_debug\output\harfbuzz --cmake-prefix-path e:\dev\meson_debug\output\freetype, then ninja install from build folder 4) try to re-build freetype with harfbuzz support enabled: meson setup build_with_harfbuzz --prefix e:\dev\meson_debug\output\freetype --cmake-prefix-path e:\dev\meson_debug\output\harfbuzz, it should show that harfbuzz isn't recognized 5) update the harfbuzz wrap file of freetype: meson wrap update harfbuzz 6) build again with the wrap file and harfbuzz enabled: meson setup build_with_harfbuzz_wrap --prefix e:\dev\meson_debug\output\freetype -Dharfbuzz=enabled, meson now successfully recognizes harfbuzz

Since I don't know how meson determines the validity of project dependencies, I'm utterly confused by this. Because apparently, if I compile harfbuzz manually, meson doesn't recognize it. However, if I use harfbuzz via the wrap file, meson is able to correctly identify harfbuzz despite being the same version that I used manually.

Expected behavior Meson correctly identifies harfbuzz if built customly.

system parameters

• Is this a cross build or just a plain native build (for the same computer)? plain native build, no cross building
• what operating system (e.g. MacOS Catalina, Windows 10, CentOS 8.0, Ubuntu 18.04, etc.)? Windows 10 22H2
• what Python version are you using, e.g. 3.8.0? System Python is 3.13, but meson uses its embedded python engine
• what meson --version? 1.6.0 (installed via msi from Github release page)
• what ninja --version if it's a Ninja build? 1.12.1 (Visual Studio bundled version)
• CMake: 3.31 (system), 3.29.5-msvc4 (VS bundled version, not used according to meson output)
• everything run from VS2022 x64 Native Tools Command Prompt

[eli-schwartz]

At stage four, I assume failure to recognize means meson errors out. It should print the log file containing debug details -- can you post that for inspection?