How should installing a library be handled?

[meator]

My program is using the loguru wrap, which provides a library with library(). It installs it and a header file. I'm not sure whether the header file should be installed but whatever.

The library must be installed alongside the program for the program to execute, because the library is dynamic.

Loguru is a small logging library, it doesn't make much sense for it to be a dynamic library, so I want a static library. I have passed static: true to dependency(). It is working well, but the library (with the header file) is still getting installed alongside my program (when invoking meson install). This is not tolerable behavior.

I see that the loguru wrap hasn't been built with static libraries in mind, but it should still be handled correctly, because Meson holds the responsibility for deciding which library is used. My question is, how can this be solved? Is the correct approach to check whether it's a static library and then make install depend on that? That's hacky. I can also patch out the installation using a diff file, but that is also not a great solution. It works around the problem.

[MartinSchwarzbauer]

Absolutly no idea, but try using 'static_library' instead of 'library'! Then only a static version is built!

[meator]

Getting a static library isn't really the problem. Using static_library is not possible in my situation, and it's also unnecessary, because that's what static: true does.

[bruchar1]

You can use meson install --skip-subprojects to only install files from your project (or you may skip specific subprojects).
You can also use --tags to only install runtime (shared library) files.