meson-python-native-file.ini' failed to parse as unicode: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xdd in position 33: invalid continuation byte

[Notenlish]

Describe the bug
I'm trying to compile Pygame-ce which uses meson to build the wheels. I tried using both my own branch and the main pygame-ce branch to compile and both of them provide the same error. I don't know whats wrong with this file, or even how I could read the contents of this file since the meson folder automatically gets deleted the moment an error happens during the build process.
Here's the pygame-ce repo and the steps to compile.

I'd appreciate any help, as I have no idea what I should do.

Full error log:

Processing c:\users\ihsan\npmbugsolve\pygame-ce2
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
  Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... error
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error

  × Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) did not run successfully.
  │ exit code: 1
  ╰─> [3 lines of output]
      + meson setup C:\Users\ihsan\npmbugsolve\pygame-ce2 C:\Users\ihsan\npmbugsolve\pygame-ce2\.mesonpy-zpumsixa -Dbuildtype=release -Db_ndebug=if-release -Db_vscrt=md --native-file=C:\Users\ihsan\npmbugsolve\pygame-ce2\.mesonpy-zpumsixa\meson-python-native-file.ini

      ERROR: Malformed machine file 'C:\\Users\\ihsan\\npmbugsolve\\pygame-ce2\\.mesonpy-zpumsixa\\meson-python-native-file.ini' failed to parse as unicode: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xdd in position 33: invalid continuation byte
      [end of output]

  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
error: metadata-generation-failed

× Encountered error while generating package metadata.
╰─> See above for output.

To Reproduce
Clone the pygame-ce repo, install the requirements and run pip install .
meson.build.txt

Expected behavior
Pygame-ce compiling without any problems.

system parameters
Plain native build(Win 11, 64 bit, Intel Processor)
Python 3.11.9
Meson version 1.5.1* what meson --version
nşnja version 1.11.1

[eli-schwartz]

This file is created here: https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson-python/blob/d93d4de2d56bacf6fd32f3ee3f18494ea38d05f0/mesonpy/__init__.py#L708-L713

It's theoretically created with utf-8 text and meson requires it to be utf-8 as well. Unsure why it would fail.

or even how I could read the contents of this file since the meson folder automatically gets deleted the moment an error happens during the build process.

You can prevent this by passing the -Cbuild-dir=$PWD/custom-build-dir argument to pip, which causes meson-python to not use a temporary directory.

[eli-schwartz]

/cc @rgommers @dnicolodi

[dnicolodi]

The native file encoding has been fixed in mesonbuild/meson-python#623 It seems we haven't had a meson-python release since that PR was merged.

Interestingly, pygame-ce puts upper strict limits to its build dependency versions, thus, even if we were to release a bugfix now, the current version of pygame-ce would still not build on the OP system.

The work around is to build on a system that uses UTF-8 as default encoding (in this case the system appears to be Windows and I have no idea about how to configure Windows to use UTF-8 encoding by default), or to build with a Python interpreter installed into a path that contains only ASCII characters.

[Notenlish]

It's theoretically created with utf-8 text and meson requires it to be utf-8 as well. Unsure why it would fail.

other members seem to be able to compile fine on windows, it only happens to me for some reason. Maybe it's to do with my user name(which contains non ascii characters)

I'll try to compile today to see the contents of the file

[Notenlish]

-Cbuild-dir=$PWD/custom-build-dir

Here's the meson-python-native-file.ini when I run pip with that arg:
meson-python-native-file.ini.txt

I was correct in my assumption, its because of my windows username

[Notenlish]

@dnicolodi I can change the meson build dependency version for testing locally, how could I go about compiling meson for python?

[Notenlish]

Figured it out, however, meson-python still seems to give an error when compiling.
Building meson-python with version 0.17.0.dev0 and using it to compile pygame-ce on main branch gives the same encoding error

Is it possible to manually change the meson-python-native-file.ini and then use the modified file to build pygame-ce?

[Notenlish]

Nevermind, pip was installing all the stuff in a venv appearently, sorry about that. I can compile pygame-ce successfully with meson now. Thanks a lot!