Error while building app qman from source with meson

Question

I'm not used to build apps from source and when I do, it's not free from hiccups.

While trying to build the app qman, I was met with this error code:

[1/11] Generating src/config.h with a custom command
FAILED: src/config.h
/usr/bin/cog -d -o src/config.h ../src/config.h.cog
cog: Cannot load more than one URL.
(cog:117462): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 14:35:12.738: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
[2/11] Generating src/config.c with a custom command
FAILED: src/config.c
/usr/bin/cog -d -o src/config.c ../src/config.c.cog
cog: Cannot load more than one URL.
(cog:117463): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 14:35:12.739: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.

After running the command meson compile. Before that, I used the command meson setup build/ --prefix=/usr/local/stow/qman. I also installed the required dependencies.

I'm running Debian 13 Trixie.

• Marcus Müller: This might actually just be a bug in the software and not your fault, and possibly not even for you to fix. Does it build in a debian 12 container (e.g., install the podman package, sudo apt install podman, then run podman run -it --rm debian:12 to get a clean-slate debian 12 environment)?
• Marcus Müller: question: what is the first line of output of /usr/bin/cog -h?
• steeldriver: @MarcusMüller are you thinking that maybe the build process is misidentifying the cog web browser as the cog file generation tool - which is listed as a qman build dependency ?
• Cristiano Xavier do Nascimento: Hi. I managed to install the app. I installed cog from pip using pipx install cogapp. Unfortunately, it's something not clear at first sight. Thanks a bunch to all who commented.
• Marcus Müller: @steeldriver exactly that! I should have written that!

Answer 1

This looks like a tool with the same executable name got installed – but as you noticed yourself (sorry for not stating that, but good work on your end!), you really need the cog file generation tool as available via pip (or your python package manager of choice) as cogapp, or, if you're on debian, Ubuntu, Fedora or derivative distros, as system package called python3-cogapp.