meson/docs/markdown/snippets/find-override.md

Can override find_program

It is now possible to override the result of find_program to point to a custom program you want. The overriding is global and applies to every subproject from there on. Here is how you would use it.

In master project

subproject('mydep')

In the called subproject:

prog = find_program('my_custom_script')
meson.override_find_program('mycodegen', prog)

In master project (or, in fact, any subproject):

genprog = find_program('mycodegen')

Now genprog points to the custom script. If the dependency had come from the system, then it would point to the system version.

You can also use the return value of configure_file() to override a program in the same way as above:

prog_script = configure_file(input : 'script.sh.in',
                             output : 'script.sh',
                             configuration : cdata)
meson.override_find_program('mycodegen', prog_script)