Using Meson as a wrapper for a C library written in Rust using Cargo.toml

[scott-wilson]

Hey, I'm writing a library that is written in Rust, but has C, C++, and Python bindings. I am interested in using Meson for the C and C++ bindings, and from my experimentation, it looks like either the Cargo.toml support isn't fully supported yet, or I'm doing something wrong.

Basically, my goals are as follows:

C API

• Create a C dynamic and static library (Can do this with the usual Rust cargo build, and having a bit of luck with meson, except running into issues with dependencies)
• Run tests in C (I want to verify that the code runs as expected in the target language)
• Create an install package that contains the header, compiled library files (prefer if the so files have the libfoo.so.1.0.0 -> libfoo.so.1.0 -> libfoo.so), CMake config, and pkg-config all in their respective directories. I can create a bunch of scripts to do this, but would prefer if I can do this in a build system.

C++ API

• Link to the compiled C API and/or link to the source project
• Create a C++ dynamic and static library
• Run tests in C++
• Create in install package with a similar output as the C library

Right now, it sort of looks doable in Meson if I use subprojects, but the structure feels weird to me.

Example of the C bindings file structure (as I understand it):

include/foo.h
src/lib.rs
subprojects/foo-rs.wrap
Cargo.toml
meson.build

The foo-rs.wrap wrap file:

[wraps-file]
method = cargo
directory = ../  # Should point to the C bindings dir

But, this feels like the wrong way to do this (to be fair, haven't tried it). What do you recommend to get this working? Or is my best bet to manually generate the C package with cargo + scripts, and then use something like Meson for the C++ API?