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5 <title>Compilation and Installation using Meson
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11 <h1>The Mesa
3D Graphics Library
</h1>
14 <iframe src=
"contents.html"></iframe>
17 <h1>Compilation and Installation using Meson
</h1>
20 <li><a href=
"#basic">Basic Usage
</a></li>
21 <li><a href=
"#cross-compilation">Cross-compilation and
32-bit builds
</a></li>
24 <h2 id=
"basic">1. Basic Usage
</h2>
26 <p><strong>The Meson build system is generally considered stable and ready
27 for production
</strong></p>
29 <p>The meson build is tested on Linux, macOS, Cygwin and Haiku, FreeBSD,
30 DragonflyBSD, NetBSD, and should work on OpenBSD.
</p>
32 <p><strong>Mesa requires Meson
>=
0.45.0 to build.
</strong>
34 Some older versions of meson do not check that they are too old and will error
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
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.
59 Meson does not currently support listing options before configure a build
60 directory, but this feature is being discussed upstream.
61 For now, the only way to see what options exist is to look at the
62 <code>meson_options.txt
</code> file at the root of the project.
66 meson configure build/
70 With additional arguments
<code>meson configure
</code> is used to change
71 options on already configured build directory. All options passed to this
72 command are in the form
<code>-D
"command"=
"value"</code>.
76 meson configure build/ -Dprefix=/tmp/install -Dglx=true
80 Note that options taking lists (such as
<code>platforms
</code>) are
81 <a href=
"http://mesonbuild.com/Build-options.html#using-build-options">a bit
82 more complicated
</a>, but the simplest form compatible with Mesa options
83 is to use a comma to separate values (
<code>-D platforms=drm,wayland
</code>)
84 and brackets to represent an empty list (
<code>-D platforms=[]
</code>).
88 Once you've run the initial
<code>meson
</code> command successfully you can use
89 your configured backend to build the project. With ninja, the -C option can be
90 be used to point at a directory to build.
98 Without arguments, it will produce libGL.so and/or several other libraries
99 depending on the options you have chosen. Later, if you want to rebuild for a
100 different configuration, you should run
<code>ninja clean
</code> before
101 changing the configuration, or create a new out of tree build directory for
102 each configuration you want to build
103 <a href=
"http://mesonbuild.com/Using-multiple-build-directories.html">as
104 recommended in the documentation
</a>
108 Autotools automatically updates translation files as part of the build process,
109 meson does not do this. Instead if you want translated drirc files you will need
110 to invoke non-default targets for ninja to update them:
111 <code>ninja -C build/ xmlpool-pot xmlpool-update-po xmlpool-gmo
</code>
115 <dt><code>Environment Variables
</code></dt>
116 <dd><p>Meson supports the standard CC and CXX environment variables for
117 changing the default compiler. Meson does support CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, etc. But
118 their use is discouraged because of the many caveats in using them. Instead it
119 is recomended to use
<code>-D${lang}_args
</code> and
120 <code>-D${lang}_link_args
</code> instead. Among the benefits of these options
121 is that they are guaranteed to persist across rebuilds and reconfigurations.
123 Meson does not allow changing compiler in a configured builddir, you will need
124 to create a new build dir for a different compiler.
128 CC=clang CXX=clang++ meson build-clang
130 ninja -C build-clang clean
131 meson configure build
-Dc_args=
"-Wno-typedef-redefinition"
136 The default compilers depends on your operating system. Meson supports most of
137 the popular compilers, a complete list is available
138 <a href=
"http://mesonbuild.com/Reference-tables.html#compiler-ids">here
</a>.
141 <p>Meson also honors
<code>DESTDIR
</code> for installs
</p>
145 <dt><code>LLVM
</code></dt>
146 <dd><p>Meson includes upstream logic to wrap llvm-config using its standard
147 dependency interface.
151 As of meson
0.49.0 meson also has the concept of a
152 <a href=
"https://mesonbuild.com/Native-environments.html">"native file"</a>,
153 these files provide information about the native build environment (as opposed
154 to a cross build environment). They are ini formatted and can override where to
160 llvm-config = '/usr/local/bin/llvm/llvm-config'
163 Then configure meson:
166 meson builddir/ --native-file custom-llvm.ini
171 For selecting llvm-config for cross compiling a
172 <a href=
"https://mesonbuild.com/Cross-compilation.html#defining-the-environment">"cross file"</a>
173 should be used. It uses the same format as the native file above:
179 llvm-config = '/usr/lib/llvm-config-
32'
182 Then configure meson:
185 meson builddir/ --cross-file cross-llvm.ini
188 See the
<a href=
"#cross-compilation">Cross Compilation
</a> section for more information.
192 For older versions of meson
<code>$PATH
</code> (or
<code>%PATH%
</code> on
193 windows) will be searched for llvm-config (and llvm-config$version and
194 llvm-config-$version), you can override this environment variable to control
195 the search:
<code>PATH=/path/with/llvm-config:$PATH meson build
</code>.
200 <dt><code>PKG_CONFIG_PATH
</code></dt>
202 <code>pkg-config
</code> utility is a hard requirement for configuring and
203 building Mesa on Unix-like systems. It is used to search for external libraries
204 on the system. This environment variable is used to control the search path for
205 <code>pkg-config
</code>. For instance, setting
206 <code>PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig
</code> will search for package
207 metadata in
<code>/usr/X11R6
</code> before the standard directories.
</p>
212 One of the oddities of meson is that some options are different when passed to
213 the
<code>meson
</code> than to
<code>meson configure
</code>. These options are
214 passed as --option=foo to
<code>meson
</code>, but -Doption=foo to
<code>meson
215 configure
</code>. Mesa defined options are always passed as -Doption=foo.
218 <p>For those coming from autotools be aware of the following:
</p>
221 <dt><code>--buildtype/-Dbuildtype
</code></dt>
222 <dd><p>This option will set the compiler debug/optimisation levels to aid
223 debugging the Mesa libraries.
</p>
225 <p>Note that in meson this defaults to
<code>debugoptimized
</code>, and
226 not setting it to
<code>release
</code> will yield non-optimal
227 performance and binary size. Not using
<code>debug
</code> may interfere
228 with debugging as some code and validation will be optimized away.
231 <p> For those wishing to pass their own optimization flags, use the
<code>plain
</code>
232 buildtype, which causes meson to inject no additional compiler arguments, only
233 those in the C/CXXFLAGS and those that mesa itself defines.
</p>
238 <dt><code>-Db_ndebug
</code></dt>
239 <dd><p>This option controls assertions in meson projects. When set to
<code>false
</code>
240 (the default) assertions are enabled, when set to true they are disabled. This
241 is unrelated to the
<code>buildtype
</code>; setting the latter to
242 <code>release
</code> will not turn off assertions.
247 <h2 id=
"cross-compilation">2. Cross-compilation and
32-bit builds
</h2>
249 <p><a href=
"https://mesonbuild.com/Cross-compilation.html">Meson supports
250 cross-compilation
</a> by specifying a number of binary paths and
251 settings in a file and passing this file to
<code>meson
</code> or
252 <code>meson configure
</code> with the
<code>--cross-file
</code>
255 <p>This file can live at any location, but you can use the bare filename
256 (without the folder path) if you put it in $XDG_DATA_HOME/meson/cross or
257 ~/.local/share/meson/cross
</p>
259 <p>Below are a few example of cross files, but keep in mind that you
260 will likely have to alter them for your system.
</p>
263 Those running on ArchLinux can use the AUR-maintained packages for some
264 of those, as they'll have the right values for your system:
266 <li><a href=
"https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/meson-cross-x86-linux-gnu">meson-cross-x86-linux-gnu
</a></li>
267 <li><a href=
"https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/meson-cross-aarch64-linux-gnu">meson-cross-aarch64-linux-gnu
</a></li>
272 32-bit build on x86 linux:
277 ar = '/usr/bin/gcc-ar'
278 strip = '/usr/bin/strip'
279 pkgconfig = '/usr/bin/pkg-config-
32'
280 llvm-config = '/usr/bin/llvm-config32'
284 c_link_args = ['-m32']
286 cpp_link_args = ['-m32']
297 64-bit build on ARM linux:
300 c = '/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc'
301 cpp = '/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-g++'
302 ar = '/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc-ar'
303 strip = '/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-strip'
304 pkgconfig = '/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-pkg-config'
305 exe_wrapper = '/usr/bin/qemu-aarch64-static'
309 cpu_family = 'aarch64'
316 64-bit build on x86 windows:
319 c = '/usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc'
320 cpp = '/usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++'
321 ar = '/usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-ar'
322 strip = '/usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-strip'
323 pkgconfig = '/usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-pkg-config'
328 cpu_family = 'x86_64'