Meson: In dependencies requires gobject-introspection but meson dont can find it

[friktor]

Im getting this error line:
_gobject-introspection dependency was not found, gir cannot be generated._
But i have gobject-introspection in my pkg-config list.

pkg-config --libs gobject-introspection-1.0
-L/usr/local/Cellar/gobject-introspection/1.52.1_1/lib -L/usr/local/Cellar/glib/2.52.3/lib -L/usr/local/opt/gettext/lib -lgirepository-1.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 -lintl -Wl,-framework -Wl,CoreFoundation

Target OS build - Mac OS Sierra

[TingPing]

It needs the g-i tools not the library, and i imagine the tools are not in PATH.

[nirbheek]

The error message should be fixed to specifically say which tool is missing.

[TingPing]

We might even be able to do better in this case. The gobject-introspection-1.0 pkg-config file contains absolute paths to its tools.

[TingPing]

Ok so I was wrong about this error being because of missing tools and it is indeed failing to look up the 'gobject-introspection-1.0' pkgconfig.

[friktor]

@TingPing this bug reproduce only on Mac OS? How i can fix this problem? Or this bug into meson?

[TingPing]

Meson just calls pkg-config directly so for some reason it is failing to find it and I would say that is unique to your environment.

[friktor]

@TingPing but if PkgConfig just call from my env - why meson dont find gobject? Mac it is like Linux... but Mac

[niedzielski]

This issue does not appeared to be limited to macOS. I'm seeing it on Ubuntu v17.10 with Meson v0.42.1 and v0.44.0:

$ dpkg -l gobject-introspection
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                  Version      Architecture Description
+++-=====================-============-============-===========================================================
ii  gobject-introspection 1.54.1-1     amd64        Generate interface introspection data for GObject libraries

$ which g-ir-compiler g-ir-scanner
/usr/bin/g-ir-compiler
/usr/bin/g-ir-scanner

$ dpkg -s gobject-introspection
Package: gobject-introspection
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: devel
Installed-Size: 1430
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <[email protected]>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 1.54.1-1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), libffi6 (>= 3.0.4), libgirepository-1.0-1 (= 1.54.1-1), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.54.0), python3:any, build-essential, python3-mako
...

[tcitworld]

@niedzielski Debian Sid needed libgirepository1.0-dev.

[gkelly]

@tcitworld thanks, that fixes the build on Ubuntu 17.10 too.

[aleks-o]

sudo dnf install gobject-introspection-devel on Fedora 27

[ljmf00]

Same issue on macOS Mojave 10.14 Beta:

Dependency gobject-2.0 found: YES 2.54.2
Configuring meson-sample.h using configuration
Determining dependency 'gobject-introspection-1.0' with pkg-config executable '/usr/local/bin/pkg-config'
Called `/usr/local/bin/pkg-config --modversion gobject-introspection-1.0` -> 0
1.54.1
Called `/usr/local/bin/pkg-config --cflags gobject-introspection-1.0` -> 1


mesongir/meson.build:18:0: ERROR:  gobject-introspection dependency was not found, gir cannot be generated.

[davibe]

same here, is there a osx workaround

[davibe]

@ljmf00
I have tried to run the same command it complains about (see the exit code -> 1)

dade@choo:~$ pkg-config --cflags gobject-introspection-1.0
Package libffi was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libffi.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
Package 'libffi', required by 'gobject-introspection-1.0', not found
dade@choo:~$ brew search libffi

So i tried

brew reinstall libffi

which reminded me of

libffi is keg-only, which means it was not symlinked into /usr/local,
because some formulae require a newer version of libffi.

For compilers to find libffi you may need to set:
  export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/libffi/lib"

For pkg-config to find libffi you may need to set:
  export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/libffi/lib/pkgconfig"

so then i tried to export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/libffi/lib/pkgconfig"

This fixed the issue, at least on my mac

[ljmf00]

@davibe macOS is not my main operation system, I just use it to test releases and code to work on cross platform, so I just figured it out because of #4132 . I can test it on High Sierra too, but whats your macOS version? Because your problem was not that, at all. The thing is pkg-config can find it but meson don't.

[davibe]

@ljmf00 in my case pkg-config --libs was able to find gobject-introspection-1.0 just fine but --cflags failed with that error, which is the same as not finding it
Infact i got the very same error you have with meson. It could be a different case but i think its worth doublechecking

I am using high sierra 10.13.6

[ManasJayanth]

@davibe 's suggestion worked for me. Thank you.

[claucece]

This might help here:

In my case I did the export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/libffi/lib/pkgconfig" as well; but I noticed that it was not finding it when using as a dependency of glib. When I switched the current version of glib (2.60) to an older one (2.56), everything worked correctly in my project (OTRv4 in pidgin).

[nefuddos]

this is the same error with my situation in os: ubuntu 16.04.5
gobject-introspection dependency was not found, gir cannot be generated.

and when i check meson-logs/meson-log.txt. it shows:
Determining dependency 'gobject-introspection-1.0' with pkg-config executable '/usr/bin/pkg-config' Meson encountered an error in file atk/meson.build, line 143, column 8: gobject-introspection dependency was not found, gir cannot be generated

i try to install libgirepository1.0-dev:
sudo apt-get install libgirepository1.0-dev

it works.

[GoPerry]

Program(s) ['g-ir-scanner'] not found in Ubuntu 18.04
i try to install libgirepository1.0-dev:
sudo apt-get install libgirepository1.0-dev

it works.

[flyingpimonster]

I tried @davibe's solution of putting libffi in the PKG_CONFIG_PATH on macOS, but it's still not working. It looks like #2400 might be why.

[grimmy]

I tried @davibe's solution of putting libffi in the PKG_CONFIG_PATH on macOS, but it's still not working. It looks like #2400 might be why.

I've added some findings to #2400, I'm still looking for a solution, but I found why it's not working, I just don't understand why that value is missing.

[JeyP4]

Program(s) ['g-ir-scanner'] not found in Ubuntu 18.04
i try to install libgirepository1.0-dev:
sudo apt-get install libgirepository1.0-dev

it works.

Instead better
sudo apt-get install gobject-introspection