Version 0.59.4-1 is a new release; it follows the upstream release. It also adds support for Apple Silicon and uses the latest build scripts.

The xPack Meson Build is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of Meson Build.

There are separate binaries for Windows (Intel 32/64-bit), macOS (Intel 64-bit, Apple Silicon 64-bit) and GNU/Linux (Intel 32/64-bit, Arm 32/64-bit).

Download

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Prerequisites

  • Intel GNU/Linux 32/64-bit: any system with GLIBC 2.15 or higher (like Ubuntu 12 or later, Debian 8 or later, RedHat/CentOS 7 later, Fedora 20 or later, etc)
  • Arm GNU/Linux 32/64-bit: any system with GLIBC 2.23 or higher (like Ubuntu 16 or later, Debian 9 or later, RedHat/CentOS 8 or later, Fedora 24 or later, etc)
  • Intel Windows 32/64-bit: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10
  • Intel macOS 64-bit: 10.13 or later
  • Apple Silicon macOS 64-bit: 11.6 or later

Install

The full details of installing the xPack Meson Build on various platforms are presented in the separate Install page.

Easy install

The easiest way to install Meson Build is with xpm by using the binary xPack, available as @xpack-dev-tools/meson-build from the npmjs.com registry.

With the xpm tool available, installing the latest version of the package and adding it as a dependency for a project is quite easy:

cd my-project
xpm init # Only at first use.

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/meson-build@latest

ls -l xpacks/.bin

To install this specific version, use:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/meson-build@0.59.4-1.1

It is also possible to install Meson Build globally, in the user home folder, but this requires xPack aware tools to automatically identify them and manage paths.

xpm install --global @xpack-dev-tools/meson-build@latest --verbose

Uninstall

To remove the links from the current project:

cd my-project

xpm uninstall @xpack-dev-tools/meson-build

To completely remove the package from the central xPacks store:

xpm uninstall --global @xpack-dev-tools/meson-build

Compliance

The xPack Meson Build generally follows the official Meson Build releases.

The current version is based on:

  • Meson Build release 0.59.4 from Oct 28th, 2021.

Changes

Compared to the upstream version, there are no functional changes.

Bug fixes

  • none

Enhancements

  • none

Known problems

  • none

Embedded Python

To simplify dependency management, this release embeds a Python 3.9.7 instance.

The meson executable is a standard ELF/EXE which includes the Python run-time; the main() function prepares the Python environment and then invokes the Meson main:

  PyRun_SimpleString("from mesonbuild import mesonmain\n");
  PyRun_SimpleString("sys.exit(mesonmain.main())\n");

The Python library is located in the standard location:

  • lib/python3.9
  • lib/python3.9/lib-dynload (the platform dependent files)

The Meson files are located in:

  • lib/python3.9/mesonbuild

To speed up execution, all Python files are compiled and are available only as .pyc.

Shared libraries

On all platforms the packages are standalone, and expect only the standard runtime to be present on the host.

All dependencies that are build as shared libraries are copied locally in the libexec folder (or in the same folder as the executable for Windows).

DT_RPATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH

On GNU/Linux the binaries are adjusted to use a relative path:

$ readelf -d library.so | grep runpath
 0x000000000000001d (RPATH)            Library rpath: [$ORIGIN]

In the GNU ld.so search strategy, the DT_RPATH has the highest priority, higher than LD_LIBRARY_PATH, so if this later one is set in the environment, it should not interfere with the xPack binaries.

Please note that previous versions, up to mid-2020, used DT_RUNPATH, which has a priority lower than LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and does not tolerate setting it in the environment.

@rpath and @loader_path

Similarly, on macOS, the binaries are adjusted with install_name_tool to use a relative path.

Documentation

The original documentation is available from:

Build

The binaries for all supported platforms (Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux) were built using the xPack Build Box (XBB), a set of build environments based on slightly older distributions, that should be compatible with most recent systems.

The scripts used to build this distribution are in:

  • distro-info/scripts

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the README-MAINTAINER page.

CI tests

Before publishing, a set of simple tests were performed on an exhaustive set of platforms. The results are available from:

Checksums

The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:

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xpack-meson-build-0.59.4-1-linux-arm.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.59.4-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.59.4-1-win32-ia32.zip

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Deprecation notices

32-bit support

Support for 32-bit Intel Linux and Intel Windows will most probably be dropped in 2022. Support for 32-bit Arm Linux will be preserved for a while, due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems.

Linux minimum requirements

Support for RedHat 7 will most probably be dropped in 2022, and the minimum requirement will be raised to GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18 and RedHat 8.

Download analytics

Credit to Shields IO for the badges and to Somsubhra/github-release-stats for the individual file counters.