man/meson.1

.TH MESON "1" "March 2024" "meson 1.4.0" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
meson - a high productivity build system
.SH DESCRIPTION

Meson is a build system designed to optimize programmer
productivity. It aims to do this by providing simple, out-of-the-box
support for modern software development tools and practices, such as
unit tests, coverage reports, Valgrind, Ccache and the like.

The main Meson executable provides many subcommands to access all
the functionality.

.SH The setup command

Using Meson is simple and follows the common two-phase
process of most build systems. First you run Meson to
configure your build:

.B meson setup [
.I options
.B ] [
.I build directory
.B ] [
.I source directory
.B ]

Note that the build directory must be different from the source
directory. Meson does not support building inside the source directory
and attempting to do that leads to an error.

After a successful configuration step you can build the source by
running the actual build command in the build directory. The default
backend of Meson is Ninja, which can be invoked like this.

\fBninja [\fR \fItarget\fR \fB]\fR

You only need to run the Meson command once: when you first configure
your build dir. After that you just run the build command. Meson will
autodetect changes in your source tree and regenerate all files
needed to build the project.

The setup command is the default operation. If no actual command is
specified, Meson will assume you meant to do a setup. That means
that you can set up a build directory without the setup command
like this:

.B meson [
.I options
.B ] [
.I build directory
.B ] [
.I source directory
.B ]

.SS "options:"
.TP
\fB\-\-version\fR
print version number
.TP
\fB\-\-help\fR
print command line help

.SH The configure command

.B meson configure
provides a way to configure a Meson project from the command line.
Its usage is simple:

.B meson configure [
.I build directory
.B ] [
.I options to set
.B ]

If build directory is omitted, the current directory is used instead.

If no parameters are set,
.B meson configure
will print the value of all build options to the console.

To set values, use the \-D command line argument like this.

.B meson configure \-Dopt1=value1 \-Dopt2=value2

.SH The introspect command

Meson introspect is a command designed to make it simple to  integrate with
other tools, such as IDEs. The output of this command is in JSON.

.B meson introspect [
.I build directory
.B ] [
.I option
.B ]

If build directory is omitted, the current directory is used instead.

.SS "options:"
.TP
\fB\-\-targets\fR
print all top level targets (executables, libraries, etc)
.TP
\fB\-\-target\-files\fR
print the source files of the given target
.TP
\fB\-\-buildsystem\-files\fR
print all files that make up the build system (meson.build, meson.options, meson_options.txt etc)
.TP
\fB\-\-tests\fR
print all unit tests
.TP
\fB\-\-help\fR
print command line help

.SH The test command

.B meson test
is a helper tool for running test suites of projects using Meson.
The default way of running tests is to invoke the default build command:

\fBninja [\fR \fItest\fR \fB]\fR

.B meson test
provides a richer set of tools for invoking tests.

.B meson test
automatically rebuilds the necessary targets to run tests when used with the Ninja backend.
Upon build failure,
.B meson test
will return an exit code of 125.
This return code tells
.B git bisect run
to skip the current commit.
Thus bisecting using git can be done conveniently like this.

.B git bisect run meson test -C build_dir

.SS "options:"
.TP
\fB\-\-repeat\fR
run tests as many times as specified
.TP
\fB\-\-gdb\fR
run tests under gdb
.TP
\fB\-\-list\fR
list all available tests
.TP
\fB\-\-wrapper\fR
invoke all tests via the given wrapper (e.g. valgrind)
.TP
\fB\-C\fR
Change into the given directory before running tests (must be root of build directory).
.TP
\fB\-\-suite\fR
run tests in this suite
.TP
\fB\-\-no\-suite\fR
do not run tests in this suite
.TP
\fB\-\-no\-stdsplit\fR
do not split stderr and stdout in test logs
.TP
\fB\-\-benchmark\fR
run benchmarks instead of tests
.TP
\fB\-\-logbase\fR
base of file name to use for writing test logs
.TP
\fB\-\-num-processes\fR
how many parallel processes to use to run tests
.TP
\fB\-\-verbose\fR
do not redirect stdout and stderr
.TP
\fB\-t\fR
a multiplier to use for test timeout values (usually something like 100 for Valgrind)
.TP
\fB\-\-setup\fR
use the specified test setup

.SH The wrap command

Wraptool is a helper utility to manage source dependencies
using the online wrapdb service.

.B meson wrap <
.I command
.B > [
.I options
.B ]

You should run this command in the top level source directory
of your project.

.SS "Commands:"
.TP
\fBlist\fR
list all available projects
.TP
\fBsearch\fR
search projects by name
.TP
\fBinstall\fR
install a project with the given name
.TP
\fBupdate\fR
update the specified project to latest available version
.TP
\fBinfo\fR
show available versions of the specified project
.TP
\fBstatus\fR
show installed and available versions of currently used subprojects

.SH EXIT STATUS

.TP
.B 0
Successful.
.TP
.B 1
Usage error, or an error parsing or executing meson.build.
.TP
.B 2
Internal error.
.TP
.B 125
.B meson test
could not rebuild the required targets.
.TP

.SH SEE ALSO

http://mesonbuild.com/

https://wrapdb.mesonbuild.com/