How to build subproject executable with cmake module?

[novafacing]

I'm a bit of a beginner with meson, but I couldn't find an answer on the docs or online.

I am using meson to build a bunch of cmake subprojects that build executables, not libraries. When I run meson builddir, cmake runs correctly but meson compile just says: ninja: no work to do instead of building the configured cmake projects. I assume this is because I am not using the cmake build target anywhere, but I can't figure out how to tell meson "build this target".

Below is my meson.build. I just have a dir with meson.build and a subdir subprojects/AIS-Lite that contains a CMakeLists.txt that configures the subproject.

What I expect to happen: I expect the AIS-Lite executable to be produced when I run meson compile.
What actually happens: builddir/subprojects/AIS-Lite/__CMake_build/ is produced, and running ninja manually there produces the executable! But it is not produced by running meson compile.

meson.build:

project('testbins', 'c', 'cpp', 'rust')

cmake = import('cmake')

# CGC Test Binaries
cgc_opt_vars = cmake.subproject_options()
cgc_opt_vars.add_cmake_defines(
    {'CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS': '-no-pie -fno-pie'}
)

ais_lite_sp = cmake.subproject('AIS-Lite', options: cgc_opt_vars)

message('CMake targets:\n - ' + '\n - '.join(ais_lite_sp.target_list()))

ais_lite_target = ais_lite_sp.target('AIS-Lite')

Edit: The solution ended up being "don't use cmake at all" and I just converted the cmake subproject to meson. However, I didn't figure out how to do this so I'll leave the discussion open in case someone in the future figures it out to help others who may encounter this.