how to run command at build time?

[stsp]

run_command() is documented to work
on configure time. On build time there is
a custom_target(), but it wants to create
a file, rather than to return the command
output as a string.
Is there a similar function to run_command(),
but for build time?

[dreamer-coding]

Run target might do the trick: https://mesonbuild.com/Reference-manual_functions.html#run_target

[stsp]

I probably forgot to mention that I
need the stdout of the command I run.
With run_command() I can do
capture: true, which seems to be
not the case with run_target()?

[dreamer-coding]

I belave that can be done using capture from run_command. If set to true, any output generated on stdout will be captured and returned by the .stdout() method. If it is false, then .stdout() will return an empty string.

custom_target might be able to do the trick for this magic command https://mesonbuild.com/Reference-manual_functions.html#custom_target

[stsp]

In custom_target() it seems capture:
captures to the output file, not to stdout().
How difficult is to add capture: to run_target()?

[stsp]

I filled #13206 ticket for this.