Link static library to shared library or to a binary - meson-build

Question

I have a static library from the project A (let's call it liba.so) and I want to compile a shared library in my project B (let's call it libb.so) and embed liba.so in it.
Also, I have a binary in that project B which also depends on liba.so, so I want to embed it in the binary.
Is that possible? How?

Answer 1

When A is a Separate Code Base
What you do is build and install project A. Then create a dependency on project A in project B's definition.
That looks like this:
a_dep = dependency('a', version : '>=1.2.8')
lib_b = shared_library('proj_b', sources: 'prog_b.c', dependencies : a_dep)
The version section in dependency is optional.
When A is in the Same Meson Project as B
When A and B are in the same meson project, it's a little uglier. You have to declare a dependency anchor in A.
That looks like this:
incdirs = include_directories('include')
lib_a = static_library('a', 'proj_a.c', include_directories : indirs)
liba_dependency = declare_dependency(
include_directories : incdirs,
link_with : lib_a,
sources : ['proj_a.c'])
Then project B becomes:
lib_b = shared_library('proj_b', sources: 'prog_b.c', dependencies : lib_a)

Answer 2

If you have an existing, precompiled library, then you can directly wrap it in a dependency:
cpp = meson.get_compiler('cpp')
# (Meson requires an absolute path for find_library().)
libdir = meson.current_source_dir() + './lib/
precompiledA_dep = cpp.find_library('A', dirs : libdir) # ./lib/libA.lib
...
# Link against libA.lib here ...
B_lib = library('libB', 'libB.cpp', dependencies : precompiledA_dep)
B_exe = executable('exeB', 'source.cpp', dependencies : precompiledA_dep)
(tested with Meson 0.57)