problem with meson

[Walter Schwarzenfeld]

I have USES=meson in the Makefile.

but it only configures if I pass CONFIGURE_ARGS+="--buildtype=release 
_build" on the commandline.

meson.mk shows:

.if defined(WITH_DEBUG)
CONFIGURE_ARGS+=        --buildtype debug
.else
CONFIGURE_ARGS+=        --buildtype release \
                         --strip
.endif

and

MESON_BUILD_DIR?= _build

so it should work, but does not.