gnome module doesn't give a clear error on missing gobject-introspection-1.0.pc files

When running meson build on a a system without the libgirepository1.0-dev package installed, I got this very cryptic error:

Program g-ir-scanner found: YES (/usr/bin/g-ir-scanner)
Program g-ir-compiler found: YES (/usr/bin/g-ir-compiler)
Meson encountered an error in file subprojects/gstreamer/gst/meson.build, line 270, column 4:
gobject-introspection dependency was not found, gir cannot be generated.

I'd expect to have the error I found in the meson logs show up in the main config:

Determining dependency 'gobject-introspection-1.0' with pkg-config executable '/usr/bin/pkg-config'