@nprofile1q... Pretty sure meson would make it hard to create this kind of issue.
But the fundamental issue is you shouldn't end up with the message and it's test in an entirely separated manner, otherwise some steps will not be made transparent.
And `sh -x` should be only for extreme cases of debugging because you get all the internals printed out (basically everything in shell is a command after all), like if somehow it wouldn't be a bug to have to run a daemon with strace due to lack of proper logs.
And sorry but I feel like you're trying to shutdown criticism by doing: But they all sucks.
Everything has bad points and sucks in some situations, but it doesn't means there isn't issues to be solved.