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 spends writing or debugging build definitions is a second wasted. So is every second spent waiting for the build system to actually start compiling code.

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!

A full manual

The documentation on this site is freely available for all. However there is also a full separate manual available for purchase on this web page.

Community

There are two main methods of connecting with other Meson developers. The first one is the mailing list, which is hosted at Google Groups.

The second way is via IRC. The channel to use is #mesonbuild at Freenode.

Many projects out there are using Meson and their communities are also a great resource for learning about what (and what not too!) do when trying to convert to using Meson.

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

Development

All development on Meson is done on the GitHub project. Instructions for contributing can be found on the contribution page.

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