gio build failed: cannot open input file 'z.lib'

[CyanBlob]

I'm trying to build this on Windows 10, but I'm getting a failure when linking against z.lib. It looks like zlib is being built properly, so I'm not sure why that would be.

Here is the interesting part of the build output:

Building project zlib (1.2.11)
Building project glib (2.66.4)
[1/120] Linking target gio/gio-2.0-0.dll
FAILED: gio/gio-2.0-0.dll gio/gio-2.0-0.pdb
"link" @gio/gio-2.0-0.dll.rsp
LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'z.lib'
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\gtk-build\github\gvsbuild\gvsbuild\utils\builder.py", line 492, in build
    if self.__build_one(p):
  File "C:\gtk-build\github\gvsbuild\gvsbuild\utils\builder.py", line 618, in __build_one
    skip_deps = proj.build()
  File "C:\gtk-build\github\gvsbuild\gvsbuild\projects.py", line 490, in build
    Meson.build(self, meson_params='-Dinternal_pcre=true')
  File "C:\gtk-build\github\gvsbuild\gvsbuild\utils\base_builders.py", line 76, in build
    self.builder.exec_ninja(params='install', working_dir=ninja_build)
  File "C:\gtk-build\github\gvsbuild\gvsbuild\utils\builder.py", line 902, in exec_ninja
    self.__execute(self.__sub_vars(cmd), working_dir=working_dir, add_path=add_path, env=self.vs_env)
  File "C:\gtk-build\github\gvsbuild\gvsbuild\utils\builder.py", line 942, in __execute
    subprocess.check_call(args, cwd=working_dir, env=env, shell=True)
  File "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.9_3.9.496.0_x64__qbz5n2kfra8p0\lib\subprocess.py", line 373, in check_call
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command 'ninja install' returned non-zero exit status 1.
Error: glib build failed

The full output can be found here: https://pastebin.com/AJ3nF75V

I've tried building both 64 and 32 bit with the same issue in both. I'm also using Visual Studio 2019

I'd appreciate help getting this working!

[h3rl]

im having the same issue aswell

[andriyDev]

In my case, I had previously installed zlib separately without msys2, so I think meson was finding that one so gvsbuild couldn't use its built version. Renaming my zlib.pc in my pkgconfig dir to something else seemed to work around the issue.

[heyjinny]

Solved this problem after installing gstreamer-1.0-msvc-x86_64-1.18.4.msi, gstreamer-1.0-devel-msvc-x86_64-1.18.4.msi (remove mingw version first). You can download these from https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/download/. Do not forget reboot. z.lib is located in d:\gstreamer\1.0\msvc_x86_64\bin. The system language must be english.

[hassanhdc]

@CyanBlob were you able to resolve this issue? I'm running into the same problem and for the life of me can't figure out a solution.