mesonbuild/meson
Meson
The Meson Build System
Features
- Build Definition Languages - Provides a declarative, non-Turing-complete DSL for defining software builds with targets and dependencies.
- Cross-Platform Build Systems - Compiles software for a different operating system or bare-metal environment than the host machine.
- Ninja Integration - Generates Ninja build files from a declarative DSL, enabling fast parallel builds with automatic dependency tracking.
- Ninja Build File Generators - Generates Ninja build files from a declarative project description, handling compiler detection and dependency resolution.
- Build Configurations - Generates Ninja build instructions from a declarative project description, handling compiler detection and dependency resolution.
- Multi-Language Build Support - Builds projects written in C, C++, C#, D, Fortran, Java, and Rust on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
- Build Target Definitions - Specifies executables, libraries, and custom build artifacts with source files, compiler arguments, and link dependencies.
- Build Toolchain Abstractions - Abstracts toolchain and system root configuration to build software for different target platforms from a single project definition.
- Multi-Language Build Systems - Builds projects written in C, C++, Rust, and other languages with a fast, declarative build definition and Ninja backend.
- Parallel Build Engines - Compiles the project using the default Ninja backend, which automatically detects the number of CPU cores for parallel builds.
- Dependency Management - Fetches and manages external library dependencies across platforms, integrating with system package managers.
- Dependency Management - Resolves and links external libraries and frameworks, including system packages and subproject dependencies.
- Explicit Install Target Tagging - Installs only explicitly tagged targets to a configurable prefix with DESTDIR support.
- Multi-Language Compilation Frontends - Supports compiling C, C++, C#, D, Fortran, Java, and Rust within a single build system, unifying language-specific toolchains.
- Cross Compilation Toolchains - Configures toolchains and system roots to compile software for different target platforms.
- Non-Turing-Complete Languages - Uses a simple, readable domain-specific language that avoids arbitrary computation, ensuring predictable and fast configuration.
- Automatic Dependency Resolution - Fetches and links external libraries from system package managers or subprojects, resolving transitive dependencies.
- Package Dependency Resolution - Resolves and links external libraries from system package managers and subprojects.
- Build Performance Optimizers - Optimizes both full and incremental builds for speed while maintaining correctness.
- Compiler Flag Customization - Passes extra compiler and linker flags through environment variables, or switches to plain mode to supply all flags manually.
- Dependency Build Options - Sets project-wide or target-specific compiler flags, preprocessor definitions, and other build-time parameters.
- Custom Command Execution - Executes arbitrary shell commands during the build process, such as code generation or custom build steps.
- IDE Integration Tools - Exposes build targets and configuration data through a machine-readable API for editor and IDE integration.
- Machine-Readable Build APIs - Exposes build targets and configuration data through a structured API, enabling editor and IDE tooling without parsing build files.
- Machine-Readable Build APIs - Exposes build targets and configuration data through a machine-readable API for editor and IDE integration.
- Installation Artifact Tagging - Installs only build artifacts explicitly marked for installation, supporting DESTDIR for packaging and deployment workflows.
- Test Suite Execution - Runs test suites with native support, compatible with any testing framework like GTest.
- Build-Systeme - High-speed, user-friendly build system for software projects.
