How to move output .exe file in another directory outside builddir

[kirildi]

Hello guys. I'm kinda new to Meson(1 month or so usage). Can't find anything on this topic from few days.

On Windows project structure is like:
ProjectDir
| -- meson.build
| -- includes/
| -- src/
| -- builddir/ - (meson builddir)
| -- release/
.....
When compile the project with meson -C builddir builded .exe always goes inside builddir. I needed it to be in release.
Project is C++17 + GCC
End of meson.build is:

executable('a',
           'main.cpp',
           include_directories : include,
           dependencies : libs,
           sources : src,
           install : true,
           install_dir: 'release')

I tried (as shown) to change output dir with install_dir, but doesn't have any effect. Thanks in advance.

[eli-schwartz]

install_dir is handled when you run meson install.

It sounds like what you want is similar to https://mesonbuild.com/Creating-OSX-packages.html just for Windows instead of macOS?

[xclaesse]

meson install -C builddir --tags runtime --destdir ../release maybe?

[kirildi]

Ok. I figured it out. I changed prefix and bindir from the meson configure like:

meson configure -Dprefix='D:\ProjectDir' -Dbindir='release'

then the meson compile and meson install with the above executable() install parameters.

Could be good if it is somehow 1 command, but anyway... they can be combined in the VS Code task I guess. Thank you.