docs/meson.html

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  10 <div class="header">
  11   <h1>The Mesa 3D Graphics Library</h1>
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  16
  17 <h1>Compilation and Installation using Meson</h1>
  18
  19 <ul>
  20   <li><a href="#basic">Basic Usage</a></li>
  21   <li><a href="#cross-compilation">Cross-compilation and 32-bit builds</a></li>
  22 </ul>
  23
  24 <h2 id="basic">1. Basic Usage</h2>
  25
  26 <p><strong>The Meson build system is generally considered stable and ready
  27 for production</strong></p>
  28
  29 <p>The meson build is tested on Linux, macOS, Cygwin and Haiku, FreeBSD,
  30 DragonflyBSD, NetBSD, and should work on OpenBSD.</p>
  31
  32 <p><strong>Mesa requires Meson >= 0.45.0 to build.</strong>
  33
  34 Some older versions of meson do not check that they are too old and will error
  35 out in odd ways.
  36 </p>
  37
  38 <p>
  39 The meson program is used to configure the source directory and generates
  40 either a ninja build file or Visual Studio® build files. The latter must
  41 be enabled via the <code>--backend</code> switch, as ninja is the default backend on all
  42 operating systems. Meson only supports out-of-tree builds, and must be passed a
  43 directory to put built and generated sources into. We'll call that directory
  44 "build" for examples.
  45 </p>
  46
  47 <pre>
  48     meson build/
  49 </pre>
  50
  51 <p>
  52 To see a description of your options you can run <code>meson configure</code>
  53 along with a build directory to view the selected options for. This will show
  54 your meson global arguments and project arguments, along with their defaults
  55 and your local settings.
  56
  57 Meson does not currently support listing options before configure a build
  58 directory, but this feature is being discussed upstream.
  59 </p>
  60
  61 <pre>
  62     meson configure build/
  63 </pre>
  64
  65 <p>
  66 With additional arguments <code>meson configure</code> is used to change
  67 options on already configured build directory. All options passed to this
  68 command are in the form <code>-D "command"="value"</code>.
  69 </p>
  70
  71 <pre>
  72     meson configure build/ -Dprefix=/tmp/install -Dglx=true
  73 </pre>
  74
  75 <p>
  76 Note that options taking lists (such as <code>platforms</code>) are
  77 <a href="http://mesonbuild.com/Build-options.html#using-build-options">a bit
  78 more complicated</a>, but the simplest form compatible with Mesa options
  79 is to use a comma to separate values (<code>-D platforms=drm,wayland</code>)
  80 and brackets to represent an empty list (<code>-D platforms=[]</code>).
  81 </p>
  82
  83 <p>
  84 Once you've run the initial <code>meson</code> command successfully you can use
  85 your configured backend to build the project. With ninja, the -C option can be
  86 be used to point at a directory to build.
  87 </p>
  88
  89 <pre>
  90     ninja -C build/
  91 </pre>
  92
  93 <p>
  94 Without arguments, it will produce libGL.so and/or several other libraries
  95 depending on the options you have chosen. Later, if you want to rebuild for a
  96 different configuration, you should run <code>ninja clean</code> before
  97 changing the configuration, or create a new out of tree build directory for
  98 each configuration you want to build
  99 <a href="http://mesonbuild.com/Using-multiple-build-directories.html">as
 100 recommended in the documentation</a>
 101 </p>
 102
 103 <p>
 104 Autotools automatically updates translation files as part of the build process,
 105 meson does not do this. Instead if you want translated drirc files you will need
 106 to invoke non-default targets for ninja to update them:
 107 <code>ninja -C build/ xmlpool-pot xmlpool-update-po xmlpool-gmo</code>
 108 </p>
 109
 110 <dl>
 111 <dt><code>Environment Variables</code></dt>
 112 <dd><p>Meson supports the standard CC and CXX environment variables for
 113 changing the default compiler. Meson does support CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, etc. But
 114 their use is discouraged because of the many caveats in using them. Instead it
 115 is recomended to use <code>-D${lang}_args</code> and
 116 <code>-D${lang}_link_args</code> instead. Among the benefits of these options
 117 is that they are guaranteed to persist across rebuilds and reconfigurations.
 118
 119 Meson does not allow changing compiler in a configured builddir, you will need
 120 to create a new build dir for a different compiler.
 121 </p>
 122
 123 <pre>
 124     CC=clang CXX=clang++ meson build-clang
 125     ninja -C build-clang
 126     ninja -C build-clang clean
 127     meson configure build -Dc_args="-Wno-typedef-redefinition"
 128     ninja -C build-clang
 129 </pre>
 130
 131 <p>
 132 The default compilers depends on your operating system. Meson supports most of
 133 the popular compilers, a complete list is available
 134 <a href="http://mesonbuild.com/Reference-tables.html#compiler-ids">here</a>.
 135 </p>
 136
 137 <p>Meson also honors <code>DESTDIR</code> for installs</p>
 138 </dd>
 139
 140
 141 <dt><code>LLVM</code></dt>
 142 <dd><p>Meson includes upstream logic to wrap llvm-config using its standard
 143 dependency interface.
 144 </p></dd>
 145
 146 <dd><p>
 147 As of meson 0.49.0 meson also has the concept of a
 148 <a href="https://mesonbuild.com/Native-environments.html">"native file"</a>,
 149 these files provide information about the native build environment (as opposed
 150 to a cross build environment). They are ini formatted and can override where to
 151 find llvm-config:
 152
 153 custom-llvm.ini
 154 <pre>
 155     [binaries]
 156     llvm-config = '/usr/local/bin/llvm/llvm-config'
 157 </pre>
 158
 159 Then configure meson:
 160
 161 <pre>
 162     meson builddir/ --native-file custom-llvm.ini
 163 </pre>
 164 </p></dd>
 165
 166 <dd><p>
 167 For selecting llvm-config for cross compiling a
 168 <a href="https://mesonbuild.com/Cross-compilation.html#defining-the-environment">"cross file"</a>
 169 should be used. It uses the same format as the native file above:
 170
 171 cross-llvm.ini
 172 <pre>
 173     [binaries]
 174     ...
 175     llvm-config = '/usr/lib/llvm-config-32'
 176 </pre>
 177
 178 Then configure meson:
 179
 180 <pre>
 181     meson builddir/ --cross-file cross-llvm.ini
 182 </pre>
 183
 184 See the <a href="#cross-compilation">Cross Compilation</a> section for more information.
 185 </dd></p>
 186
 187 <dd><p>
 188 For older versions of meson <code>$PATH</code> (or <code>%PATH%</code> on
 189 windows) will be searched for llvm-config (and llvm-config$version and
 190 llvm-config-$version), you can override this environment variable to control
 191 the search: <code>PATH=/path/with/llvm-config:$PATH meson build</code>.
 192 </dd></p>
 193 </dl>
 194
 195 <dl>
 196 <dt><code>PKG_CONFIG_PATH</code></dt>
 197 <dd><p>The
 198 <code>pkg-config</code> utility is a hard requirement for configuring and
 199 building Mesa on Unix-like systems. It is used to search for external libraries
 200 on the system. This environment variable is used to control the search path for
 201 <code>pkg-config</code>. For instance, setting
 202 <code>PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig</code> will search for package
 203 metadata in <code>/usr/X11R6</code> before the standard directories.</p>
 204 </dd>
 205 </dl>
 206
 207 <p>
 208 One of the oddities of meson is that some options are different when passed to
 209 the <code>meson</code> than to <code>meson configure</code>. These options are
 210 passed as --option=foo to <code>meson</code>, but -Doption=foo to <code>meson
 211 configure</code>. Mesa defined options are always passed as -Doption=foo.
 212 </p>
 213
 214 <p>For those coming from autotools be aware of the following:</p>
 215
 216 <dl>
 217 <dt><code>--buildtype/-Dbuildtype</code></dt>
 218 <dd><p>This option will set the compiler debug/optimisation levels to aid
 219 debugging the Mesa libraries.</p>
 220
 221 <p>Note that in meson this defaults to <code>debugoptimized</code>, and
 222 not setting it to <code>release</code> will yield non-optimal
 223 performance and binary size. Not using <code>debug</code> may interfere
 224 with debugging as some code and validation will be optimized away.
 225 </p>
 226
 227 <p> For those wishing to pass their own optimization flags, use the <code>plain</code>
 228 buildtype, which causes meson to inject no additional compiler arguments, only
 229 those in the C/CXXFLAGS and those that mesa itself defines.</p>
 230 </dd>
 231 </dl>
 232
 233 <dl>
 234 <dt><code>-Db_ndebug</code></dt>
 235 <dd><p>This option controls assertions in meson projects. When set to <code>false</code>
 236 (the default) assertions are enabled, when set to true they are disabled. This
 237 is unrelated to the <code>buildtype</code>; setting the latter to
 238 <code>release</code> will not turn off assertions.
 239 </p>
 240 </dd>
 241 </dl>
 242
 243 <h2 id="cross-compilation">2. Cross-compilation and 32-bit builds</h2>
 244
 245 <p><a href="https://mesonbuild.com/Cross-compilation.html">Meson supports
 246 cross-compilation</a> by specifying a number of binary paths and
 247 settings in a file and passing this file to <code>meson</code> or
 248 <code>meson configure</code> with the <code>--cross-file</code>
 249 parameter.</p>
 250
 251 <p>This file can live at any location, but you can use the bare filename
 252 (without the folder path) if you put it in $XDG_DATA_HOME/meson/cross or
 253 ~/.local/share/meson/cross</p>
 254
 255 <p>Below are a few example of cross files, but keep in mind that you
 256 will likely have to alter them for your system.</p>
 257
 258 <p>
 259 Those running on ArchLinux can use the AUR-maintained packages for some
 260 of those, as they'll have the right values for your system:
 261 <ul>
 262   <li><a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/meson-cross-x86-linux-gnu">meson-cross-x86-linux-gnu</a></li>
 263   <li><a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/meson-cross-aarch64-linux-gnu">meson-cross-aarch64-linux-gnu</a></li>
 264 </ul>
 265 </p>
 266
 267 <p>
 268 32-bit build on x86 linux:
 269 <pre>
 270 [binaries]
 271 c = '/usr/bin/gcc'
 272 cpp = '/usr/bin/g++'
 273 ar = '/usr/bin/gcc-ar'
 274 strip = '/usr/bin/strip'
 275 pkgconfig = '/usr/bin/pkg-config-32'
 276 llvm-config = '/usr/bin/llvm-config32'
 277
 278 [properties]
 279 c_args = ['-m32']
 280 c_link_args = ['-m32']
 281 cpp_args = ['-m32']
 282 cpp_link_args = ['-m32']
 283
 284 [host_machine]
 285 system = 'linux'
 286 cpu_family = 'x86'
 287 cpu = 'i686'
 288 endian = 'little'
 289 </pre>
 290 </p>
 291
 292 <p>
 293 64-bit build on ARM linux:
 294 <pre>
 295 [binaries]
 296 c = '/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc'
 297 cpp = '/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-g++'
 298 ar = '/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc-ar'
 299 strip = '/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-strip'
 300 pkgconfig = '/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-pkg-config'
 301 exe_wrapper = '/usr/bin/qemu-aarch64-static'
 302
 303 [host_machine]
 304 system = 'linux'
 305 cpu_family = 'aarch64'
 306 cpu = 'aarch64'
 307 endian = 'little'
 308 </pre>
 309 </p>
 310
 311 <p>
 312 64-bit build on x86 windows:
 313 <pre>
 314 [binaries]
 315 c = '/usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc'
 316 cpp = '/usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++'
 317 ar = '/usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-ar'
 318 strip = '/usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-strip'
 319 pkgconfig = '/usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-pkg-config'
 320 exe_wrapper = 'wine'
 321
 322 [host_machine]
 323 system = 'windows'
 324 cpu_family = 'x86_64'
 325 cpu = 'i686'
 326 endian = 'little'
 327 </pre>
 328 </p>
 329
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