Just as idea: doesn't PyPi set a build environment variable? Couldn't we use that one as input? Or is this a stupid idea?
Also would it make sense to toggle the other options (-Dnvme=disabled...) based on this one?

I'm not familiar with the PyPI build environment variables. Heck, I did not know anything about building PyPI until a few days ago... 😄. But I'm curious to know what you have in mind.

Yes, it does make sense to toggle all the options based on the -Dpypi being set. I can work on that.

@igaw - Note that toggling the other options based on -Dpypi=true is not 100% foolproof. That's because we can't actually overwrite the value of an option returned by get_option().

For example, we can overwrite options like this:

want_pypi = get_option('pypi')
if want_pypi
   want_tests = false
   want_nvme = false
   want_libnvme = true
   etc...
else
   want_tests = get_option('tests')
   want_nvme = get_option('nvme').disabled() == false
   want_libnvme = get_option('libnvme').disabled() == false
   etc...
endif

We just need to make sure to use if want_<option> instead of if get_option('<option>') in all the meson.build files.

Would you like me to proceed with this change?

Okay, sounds like asking for trouble. Let's go with your solution. If it works we can still clean it up if needed.