[question] Windows - Meson - Cross compiling from x86_64 to arm64

[szigetics]

What is your question?

Hello!

Many recipes on the conan-center-index ( https://github.com/conan-io/conan-center-index ) have been updated to use Meson for building recipes.
I am having an issue, cross compiling from Windows x86_64 to Windows Arm64 using Meson. Here is the actual error that I see :

[2023-01-17T19:20:46.137Z] harfbuzz/5.3.1@jenkins-clt/stable: Meson configure cmd: meson setup --cross-file "C:\.conan\59d48f\1\build-debug\conan\conan_meson_cross.ini" "C:\.conan\59d48f\1\build-debug" "C:\.conan\59d48f\1\src" -Dprefix="C:\.conan\78bd72\1"
[2023-01-17T19:20:46.398Z] **********************************************************************
[2023-01-17T19:20:46.398Z] ** Visual Studio 2022 Developer Command Prompt v17.4.4
[2023-01-17T19:20:46.398Z] ** Copyright (c) 2022 Microsoft Corporation
[2023-01-17T19:20:46.398Z] **********************************************************************
[2023-01-17T19:20:48.305Z] [vcvarsall.bat] Environment initialized for: 'x64_arm64'
[2023-01-17T19:20:49.707Z] The Meson build system
[2023-01-17T19:20:49.707Z] Version: 0.64.1
[2023-01-17T19:20:49.707Z] Source dir: C:\.conan\59d48f\1\src
[2023-01-17T19:20:49.707Z] Build dir: C:\.conan\59d48f\1\build-debug
[2023-01-17T19:20:49.707Z] Build type: cross build
[2023-01-17T19:20:49.707Z] Project name: harfbuzz
[2023-01-17T19:20:49.707Z] Project version: 5.3.1
[2023-01-17T19:20:49.707Z] 
[2023-01-17T19:20:49.707Z] ..\src\meson.build:1:0: ERROR: 'c' compiler binary not defined in cross or native file

Based on these threads, it could be an issue with conan itself :
#10285
#4529

I have 2 questions :

1. What is the current easiest and officially supported way for cross building using the Meson toolchain via conan?
2. When will conan support cross building via Meson? Is there a specific Github issue that you would recommend following for status updates on this topic?

Thank you really much for your help in advance and keep up the good work! 🙂

Have you read the CONTRIBUTING guide?

• I've read the CONTRIBUTING guide

[SpaceIm]

Recipes migrated to MesonToolchain support cross-build, but looking at source code of MesonToolchain it is not robust to cross-build with Visual Studio if host profile doesn't explicitly set c & cpp keys of tools.build:compiler_executables config (or CC & CXX env vars in [buildenv]).

Add this to your host profile and it should work I think:

[conf]
tools.build:compiler_executables={"c": "cl", "cpp": "cl"}
[builenv]
CC=cl
CXX=cl

[szigetics]

Recipes migrated to MesonToolchain support cross-build, but looking at source code of MesonToolchain it is not robust to cross-build with Visual Studio if host profile doesn't explicitly set c & cpp keys of tools.build:compiler_executables config (or CC & CXX env vars in [buildenv]).

Add this to your host profile and it should work I think:

[conf]
tools.build:compiler_executables={"c": "cl", "cpp": "cl"}
[builenv]
CC=cl
CXX=cl

Thank you @SpaceIm for the quick response! This worked like a charm!
(I had to fix the typo builenv => buildenv.)

[memsharded]

Fixed in #13141 for Conan 1.61 and 2.0.7