The Meson Build system (2024)

FAQs

Is Meson a good build system? ›

The best thing about Meson Build System is the fact that it is easy to use quickly. It supports Linux, MacOS, Windows operating systems apart from multiple compilers. Meson do not allow you to build code in same folder as the source, which is great as well.

Meson is different from some other build systems in that it does not permit in-source builds. You must always create a separate build directory. Common convention is to put the default build directory in a subdirectory of your top level source directory. When Meson is run it prints the following output.

The Meson default is to produce a debug build with binaries compiled with debug symbols and, when compiling with MSVC, linking to the Visual Studio debug runtime, see below.

To compile any given configuration, just go into the corresponding build directory and run meson compile . Meson will automatically add compiler flags to enable debug information and compiler warnings (i.e. -g and -Wall ). This means the user does not have to deal with them and can instead focus on coding.

Pros. The fastest build system see measurements, user friendly, designed to be as invisible to the developer as possible, native support for modern tools (precompiled headers, coverage, Valgrind etc).

All mesons are unstable, with lifetimes ranging from 10⁻⁸ second to less than 10⁻²² second. They also vary widely in mass, from 140 megaelectron volts (MeV; 10⁶ eV) to nearly 10 gigaelectron volts (GeV; 10⁹ eV).

There is usually no need to specify install paths or the like. Meson will automatically install it to the standards-conforming location. In this particular case the executable is installed to the bin subdirectory of the install prefix.

Being written in Python, Meson runs on Unix-like operating systems, including macOS, as well as Microsoft Windows and on other operating systems. Meson supports the C, C++, CUDA, D, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, C#, Rust, and Vala languages, and has a mechanism for handling dependencies called Wrap.

Meson provides four kinds of build targets: executables, libraries (which can be set to be built as static or shared or both of them at the build configuration time), static libraries, and shared libraries. They are created with the commands executable , library , static_library and shared_library , respectively.

Mesons are also used to study the structure of the nucleus, and they can be used to produce other particles, such as neutrinos. Here are some specific examples of the uses of mesons: 1. Studying the strong force: The strong force is the force that binds quarks together to form protons, neutrons, and other hadrons.

Where does Meson look for dependencies? ›

Meson can use the CMake find_package() function to detect dependencies with the builtin Find<NAME>. cmake modules and exported project configurations (usually in /usr/lib/cmake ).

Meson uses out of source builds. Hint: The syntax of Meson is meson [command] [arguments] [options] . The setup command takes a builddir and a srcdir argument. If no srcdir is given Meson will deduce the srcdir based on pwd and the location of meson. build .

Meson is available in the Python Package Index and can be installed with pip3 install --user meson . This does not require any special privileges. This will install the package in ~/. local/ , so you will have to add ~/.

Select the configuration (Debug or Release) and platform (x86, x64, etc.) you want to build for from the toolbar. Click on the "Build" menu and select "Build Solution" or press the F6 key. Visual Studio will compile your project and generate an executable file (usually with a .exe extension) in the output directory.

Because a meson consists of a particle and an antiparticle, it is very unstable.

Meson supports GNU Compiler Collection, Clang, Microsoft Visual C++ and other compilers, including non-traditional compilers such as Emscripten and Cython. The project uses ninja as the primary backend buildsystem, but can also use Microsoft Visual Studio or Xcode backends.

In essence, Ninja is meant to replace Make, which is slow when performing incremental (or no-op) builds. This can considerably slow down developers working on large projects, such as Google Chrome which compiles 40,000 input files into a single executable. In fact, Google Chrome is a main user and motivation for Ninja.

The most common type of mesons are the pions (pi mesons), kaons (K mesons) and the eta meson (η-meson). These are also the only types of meson that are long-lived enough to be seen directly by their tracks in a detector.