Compile only targets defined in superproject

[Sahnvour]

Hi,

I have a setup with multiple projects that are subprojects of one another. Let's say A -> B -> C.
They all have a CI hooked up to test compilation and run unit tests.

To avoid wasting resources, in superproject A, I want to compile every target that is defined by meson setup, but I don't care for superfluous B or C targets that don't participate. I also don't care for their unit test targets.

At the moment, the only solution I know is listing explicitely every target I want to build and pass it to meson compile but that's brittle and cumbersome.
Is there a better way ?

One workaround I thought of was loading intro-targets.json and filter it to determine the list of targets I'm interested in. I'd like to avoid that if possible.

[eli-schwartz]

Many subprojects have build options to determine whether their tests get built. And in general, tests should probably be annotated with build_by_default: false so they never get built by "ninja all" but do get built by "ninja meson-test-prereq" or "meson test".

Avoiding building library targets is tougher. Meson doesn't provide a built-in way to do this and while subprojects could automatically make all libraries static and install: false, build_by_default: false so they're only built when used as a link dependency of another target, most subprojects don't (and it's verbose to do it).

[Sahnvour]

Thanks for your answer, I didn't think of this and it makes sense. As I own all the sub/projects it may very well be good enough.