Error from meson build for a missing header which exists

Question

From this simple Meson build file I get an error on line *** about a missing header file:

# meson.build - src/

subdir('config')
subdir('testers')
subdir('utilities')

headers += [
]

mainPrj += [
    'entrypoint.cpp'
    ]

autoTest += [
    'entrypoint_test.cpp'
]

Source = [ headers, mainPrj ]
SourceTest = [ headers, autoTest ]

MyProgExe = executable('MyProg', Source)     ***
MyProgTestExe = executable('MyProgTest', SourceTest)

test('Internal test', MyProgTestExe)

This is the error message:

src/meson.build:***:0: ERROR: File dataStructures.hpp does not exist.

The header does exist, it is in directory src/config/, and it does not appear in src/meson.build file, but in src/config/meson.build:

# meson.build - src/config/

headers += [
    'dataStructures.hpp',
    'interface.hpp'
]

If I swap dataStructures.hpp and interface.hpp, I get the error with interface.hpp.

I must be doing something wrong with the meson.build files, but I cannot find what.

Answer 1

You do not need to list your header files. Just add include directories like this:

inc_dir = include_directories('path/to/include')

in your case:

inc_dir = include_directories('src/config')
MyProgExe = executable('MyProg', Source, include_directories: inc_dir, ...)

What I usually do is to declare project dependency:

project_dep = declare_dependency(include_directories: inc_dir, sources: srcs,
dependencies[...])

and use that for each target (e.g. app and test executables) like this:

src_main = ...
executable('app', sources:srcs_main, dependencies:[project_dep])
...
test_main = ...
executable('unit_tests', sources:[test_main, test_specific_srcs], dependencies:[project_dep])