Meson build error "Function does not take positional arguments."

[St3fi]

Hello!

I just updated my archlinux and revelation stopped working. I followed the current install steps with meson but could not create the _build directory:

Program desktop-file-validate found: YES (/usr/bin/desktop-file-validate)
data/meson.build:61:5: ERROR: Function does not take positional arguments.

How can this be fixed?

Kind regards
Stefi

[nicfit]

@St3fi I worked around this, but it appears this a meson issue. First, I installed meson-git (on archlinux) hoping this was fixed, as this mesonbuild/meson#9445 addresses the issue. No luck though, so I edited /usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/mesonbuild/modules/i18n.py and removed the @noPosArgs. After making this change I was able to yay -S revelaton

[St3fi]

@nicfit thank you for your reply!

I was able to install revelation via yay -S beforehand, however I go another error in the first place when executing revelation:
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'revelation'

However, it somehow works now, this is what I did:

1. edited /usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/mesonbuild/modules/i18n.py and removed the @noPosArgs (as you suggested)
2. reinstalled revelation with yay -S revelation (same error as before then)
3. Run the meson-setup again: meson setup --prefix=$HOME/.local _build
4. Run compilation/installation: meson install -C _build (that did not run as well)
5. reinstalled revelation with yay -S revelation

Now it somehow worked, although I don't know why...

[eli-schwartz]

First, I installed meson-git (on archlinux) hoping this was fixed, as this mesonbuild/meson#9445 addresses the issue.

Uhmmmmm... no.

This does not "fix the issue".

Meson 0.60 printed a warning that this line is always wrong, does nothing, and should be removed:

revelation/data/meson.build

Line 62 in 29cbbd1

metainfo,

The meson ticket you are linking to is the one that made it a warning instead of an error. Now, it is back to being an error. People were supposed to be removing those lines.

Why edit root-owned files like mesonbuild/modules/i18n.py when you could just fix this project the correct way?

[nicfit]

@eli-schwartz I said "I worked around this...".. Nothing was fixed. Why edit? Because that is what it took for me to install revelation, when I needed a password then. Not later.

[ernstki]

I believe https://github.com/mikelolasagasti/revelation/pull/88/files was on the right track and probably resolved this, based on a similar situation I ran into on elementary OS. Could this issue be closed by someone with the ability to (re)test it?

Related: spheras/desktopfolder#337, which actually referred me here, and spheras/desktopfolder#335.

What's absolutely classic about this whole situation is that meson tells you to look in the top-level meson.build at a specific line number, but actual changes need to be made to a meson.build file somewhere else, e.g.:

diff --git a/data/meson.build b/data/meson.build
index 019188b..82be32e 100644
--- a/data/meson.build
+++ b/data/meson.build
@@ -13,7 +13,6 @@ install_data(
 )
 
 i18n.merge_file (
-    'desktop',
     input: meson.project_name() + '.desktop.in',
     output: meson.project_name() + '.desktop',
     install: true,
@@ -23,7 +22,6 @@ i18n.merge_file (
 )
 
 i18n.merge_file (
-    'appdata',
     input: meson.project_name() + '.appdata.xml.in',
     output: meson.project_name() + '.appdata.xml',
     install: true,

[eli-schwartz]

What's absolutely classic about this whole situation is that meson tells you to look in the top-level meson.build at a specific line number, but actual changes need to be made to a meson.build file somewhere else, e.g.:

Can you please clarify this statement -- the posted error message was

data/meson.build:61:5: ERROR: Function does not take positional arguments.

Which rather evidently does tell you to look in a sub-directory level meson.build file.

(It's also the exact immediate line before the one that needs to be removed per the quoted lines I posted above, which the PR you reference did as well. That's most certainly not a different file, and it is extremely local to the correct line to remove as well. The reason it reports a different line is because it reports the line where the function begins, rather than the line containing the issueful argument. Meson doesn't currently track error reporting nodes with finer granularity than this.)