title: Vala short-description: Compiling Vala and Genie programs ...
Meson has support for compiling Vala and Genie programs. A skeleton meson.build
file for Vala looks like this:
project('valaprog', 'vala', 'c') glib_dep = dependency('glib-2.0') gobject_dep = dependency('gobject-2.0') executable('valaprog', 'prog.vala', dependencies : [glib_dep, gobject_dep])
You must always specify glib-2.0
and gobject-2.0
as dependencies, because all Vala applications use them.
When dealing with libraries that are not providing Vala bindings, a --vapidir
flag can be added to extend the search path for the current project.
project('vala app', 'c', 'vala') add_project_arguments(['--vapidir', join_paths(meson.current_source_dir(), 'vapi')], language: 'vala') glib_dep = dependency('glib-2.0') gobject_dep = dependency('gobject-2.0') foo_dep = dependency('foo') # 'foo.vapi' will be resolved in './vapi/foo.vapi' executable('app', 'app.vala', dependencies: [glib_dep, gobject_dep, foo_dep])
In this case, make sure that the VAPI name corresponds to the pkg-config file.
If no pkg-config file is provided, you must use find_library
. Usingdeclare_dependency
is cleaner because it does not require passing both dependency objects to the target.
foo_lib = meson.get_compiler('c').find_library('foo') # assuming libfoo.so is installed foo_vapi = meson.get_compiler('vala').find_library('foo', dirs: join_paths(meson.current_source_dir(), 'vapi')) foo_dep = declare_dependency(dependencies: [foo_lib, foo_vapi]) executable('app', 'app.vala', dependencies: [glib_dep, gobject_dep, foo_dep])
Some Vala bindings do not need a corresponding pkg-config file and dependency
is unsuitable for resolving them. It's necessary to use find_library
in this case.
posix_dep = meson.get_compiler('vala').find_library('posix') executable('app', 'app.vala', dependencies: [glib_dep, gobject_dep, posix_dep])
If a library target is used, Meson automatically outputs the C header and the VAPI. They can be renamed by setting the vala_header
and vala_vapi
arguments respectively. In this case, the second and third elements of the install_dir
array indicate the destination with true
to indicate default directories (i.e. include
and share/vala/vapi
).
foo_lib = library('foo', 'foo.vala', vala_header: 'foo.h', vala_vapi: 'foo-1.0.vapi', dependencies: [glib_dep, gobject_dep], install: true, install_dir: [true, true, true])
To generate GObject Introspection metadata, the vala_gir
option has to be set with the desired name.
The fourth element in the install_dir
array indicate where the GIR file will be installed. The true
value tells Meson to use the default directory (i.e. share/gir-1.0
).
foo_lib = library('foo', 'foo.vala', vala_gir: 'Foo-1.0.gir', dependencies: [glib_dep, gobject_dep], install: true, install_dir: [true, true, true, true])
For the typelib, use a custom target depending on the library:
g_ir_compiler = find_program('g-ir-compiler') custom_target('foo typelib', command: [g_ir_compiler, '--output', '@OUTPUT@', '@INPUT@'], input: join_paths(meson.current_build_dir(), 'Foo-1.0.gir'), output: 'Foo-1.0.typelib', depends: foo_lib, install: true, install_dir: join_paths(get_option('libdir'), 'girepository-1.0'))