The Meson Build system

Overview

Meson is an open source build system meant to be both extremely fast,and, even more importantly, as user friendly as possible.

The main design point of Meson is that every moment a developer spendswriting or debugging build definitions is a second wasted. So is everysecond spent waiting for the build system to actually start compilingcode.

Features

• multiplatform support for Linux, macOS, Windows, GCC, Clang, Visual Studio and others
• supported languages include C, C++, D, Fortran, Java, Rust
• build definitions in a very readable and user friendly non-Turing complete DSL
• cross compilation for many operating systems as well as bare metal
• optimized for extremely fast full and incremental builds without sacrificing correctness
• built-in multiplatform dependency provider that works together with distro packages
• fun!

Quickstart for beginners

Are you an absolute beginner when it comes to programming? No worries,readthis beginner guide to get started.

Tutorials

• Get it
• Build a Gtk app from scratch
• Build a SDL app from scratch
• How do I do X in Meson?

Manual

• Usage manual
• API reference manual
• Modules documentation
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Release Notes

Community

The easiest way for most people to connect to other Meson developers isa web chat. The channel to use is#mesonbuild either via Matrix (webinterface) orOFTC IRC.

Other methods of communication include themailinglist (hosted byGoogle Groups) and theDiscussions sectionof the Meson GitHub repository.

Development

All development on Meson is done on theGitHubproject. Instructions forcontributing can be found on thecontribution page.

You do not need to sign a CLA to contribute to Meson.

The release process is separately covered atReleasing.

Projects using Meson

Many projects are using Meson and they'rea great resource for learning what to (and what not to!) do whenconverting existing projects to Meson.

A short list of Meson users can be found herebut there are many more. We would love to hear about your successstories too and how things could be improved too!