Hi,

On Thu, 16 Apr 2026 at 09:26, Álvaro Herrera <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On 2026-04-14, Nazir Bilal Yavuz wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 14 Apr 2026 at 11:08, Peter Eisentraut <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>
> >> If I remove the alias_target, then my original command works.  What is
> >> the purpose of this alias?
> >
> > I think the main purpose was using these targets with the ninja
> > command like: 'ninja ${target}'. ninja command doesn't work when the
> > alias_target() is removed.
>
> I think this is kinda silly. I would rather rename the meson target (to, say, 
> do_html) and make the alias reference that, so that both "meson compile html" 
> and "ninja html" would use the alias.

I agree with you. Here is a patch for fixing this problem with your
suggestion. I added the '-custom' suffix instead of the 'do_' prefix,
I think this makes it more concrete.


-- 
Regards,
Nazir Bilal Yavuz
Microsoft
From afec829a66a9b8b528969d9744dba3112497da18 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Nazir Bilal Yavuz <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:58:53 +0300
Subject: [PATCH v1] meson: Differentiate top-level and custom targets
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

We need to create top-level targets to run targets with the ninja
command like `ninja <target_name>`.

Some targets (man, html, ...) have the same target name on both
top-level and custom target. This creates a confusion for the meson
build:

$ meson compile -C build html

```
ERROR: Can't invoke target `html`: ambiguous name. Add target type
and/or path:
- ./doc/src/sgml/html:custom
- ./doc/src/sgml/html:alias
```

Solve that problem by adding '-custom' suffix to these problematic
targets' custom target names. Top-level targets can be called with both
meson and ninja now:

$ meson compile -C build html
$ ninja -C build html

Suggested-by: Álvaro Herrera <[email protected]>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/5508e572-79ae-4b20-84d0-010a66d077f2%40eisentraut.org
---
 doc/src/sgml/meson.build | 8 ++++----
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/meson.build b/doc/src/sgml/meson.build
index a1ae5c54ed6..8517d837b78 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/meson.build
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/meson.build
@@ -137,7 +137,7 @@ endif
 # Full documentation as html, text
 #
 if docs_dep.found()
-  html = custom_target('html',
+  html = custom_target('html-custom',
     input: ['stylesheet.xsl', postgres_full_xml],
     output: 'html',
     depfile: 'html.d',
@@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ if docs_dep.found()
   )
   alldocs += html
 
-  install_doc_html = custom_target('install-html',
+  install_doc_html = custom_target('install-html-custom',
     output: 'install-html',
     command: [
       python, install_files, '--prefix', dir_prefix,
@@ -189,7 +189,7 @@ endif
 #
 if docs_dep.found()
   # FIXME: implement / consider sqlmansectnum logic
-  man = custom_target('man',
+  man = custom_target('man-custom',
     input: ['stylesheet-man.xsl', postgres_full_xml],
     output: ['man1', 'man3', 'man7'],
     depfile: 'man.d',
@@ -198,7 +198,7 @@ if docs_dep.found()
   )
   alldocs += man
 
-  install_doc_man = custom_target('install-man',
+  install_doc_man = custom_target('install-man-custom',
     output: 'install-man',
     input: man,
     command: [
-- 
2.47.3

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