Build fail on Debian testing + clang

[Stephan Bergmann]

On 16.04.25 08:15, Miklos Vajna wrote:
> There has been advice on IRC that the "python3" prefix here is not
> wanted:
> 
> 12:10 <ztrawhcse> vmiklos, cloph: if you're running "meson from PATH" then definitely do not prefix it with a python command as it could be absolutely anything
> 12:10 <ztrawhcse> could even be a C program
> 12:11 <ztrawhcse> "meson" could be the PyInstaller bootstrap extractor that is used to distribute standalone "looks like a C program" python redistributables
> 12:13 <ztrawhcse> if $MESON has been set to a non-PATH file containing a .py then that is a certain indicator it needs to run with a specific python
> 12:13 <ztrawhcse> (but note that it uses #!/usr/bin/env python3, so will find one on PATH if you inject python3 into PATH)
> 
> Anyhow, the workaround I used is to install meson 0.61.5 into ~/bin,
> then "python3 meson" will work fine and the problem is avoided.
> 
> It seems you hit a similar case because the internal python is
> Python-3.11.12, so in case your meson is not installed using that
> python, the python module of meson (mesonbuild) won't be found.

I would naively assume that it would be exceptional scenarios rather 
than the norm that invocations of $(MESON) need to be prefixed by $(call 
gb_ExternalExecutable_get_command,python) in 
external/harfbuzz/ExternalProject_harfbuzz.mk.  Yet 
<https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/183345> "harfbuzz: migrate to 
meson" is unfortunately silent on why it adds that prefix, and why it 
adds that prefix unconditionally.  Cloph, can you please clarify?