Default CodeQL action uses Ubuntu Jammy, which has a very old version of Meson

[a5ehren]

I'm targeting a project that is more interested in leading-edge distros than most (https://github.com/a5ehren/gamemode/tree/master) and have restricted the minimum Meson version to 1.3.1 in order to clean out a bunch of deprecated code - but the stock CodeQL Autobuild action uses Ubuntu 22.04 and installs Meson from the repos, which is version 0.61.2 which is 4+ years old.

[2025-04-30 14:01:19] [build-stdout] unzip is already the newest version (6.0-26ubuntu3.2).
[2025-04-30 14:01:19] [build-stdout] 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 19 not upgraded.
[2025-04-30 14:01:19] [build-stderr] cpp/autobuilder: using built-in deptrace DB
[2025-04-30 14:01:20] [build-stderr] cpp/autobuilder: launched deptrace server
[2025-04-30 14:01:20] [build-stderr] cpp/autobuilder: Using build system found in '.'
[2025-04-30 14:01:20] [build-stderr] cpp/autobuilder: trying to run meson .. [current dir: /home/runner/work/gamemode/gamemode/_codeql_build_dir]
[2025-04-30 14:01:25] [build-stdout] The Meson build system
[2025-04-30 14:01:25] [build-stdout] Version: 0.61.2
[2025-04-30 14:01:25] [build-stdout] Source dir: /home/runner/work/gamemode/gamemode
[2025-04-30 14:01:25] [build-stdout] Build dir: /home/runner/work/gamemode/gamemode/_codeql_build_dir
[2025-04-30 14:01:25] [build-stdout] Build type: native build
[2025-04-30 14:01:25] [build-stdout] ../meson.build:1:0: ERROR: Meson version is 0.61.2 but project requires >= 1.3.1

The fix here is to either:

1. Install the latest meson from pip and use that.
2. Update the action to run on Ubuntu 24.04.

[aeisenberg]

In situations like this, our default setup for codeql isn't sufficient. I suggest that you migrate to advanced setup and specify a custom build step that will install the version of meson that you require.

Instructions on how to move to advanced setup are here.

[a5ehren]

That’s what I did, just filing a report to see if the image could be updated