Configuring a build directory

Often you want to change the settings of your build after it has been generated. For example you might want to change from a debug build into a release build, set custom compiler flags, change the build options provided in your meson_options.txt file and so on.

The main tool for this is the mesonconf script. You may also use the mesongui graphical application if you want. However this document describes the use of the command line client.

You invoke mesonconf by giving it the location of your build dir. If omitted, the current working directory is used instead. Here's a sample output for a simple project.

Core properties

Source dir /home/jpakkane/clangdemo/2_address
Build dir  /home/jpakkane/clangdemo/2_address/buildmeson

Core options

type     Build type          debug
strip    Strip on install    False
coverage Coverage report     False
pch      Precompiled headers True
unity    Unity build         False

Compiler flags

cflags []

Linker flags

clinkflags []

Directories

installprefix Install prefix        /usr/local
libdir        Library directory     lib
bindir        Binary directory      bin
includedir    Header directory      include
datadir       Data directory        share
mandir        Man page directory    share/man
localedir     Locale file directory share/locale

This project does not have any options

These are all the options available for the current project arranged into related groups. The first column in every field is the name of the option. To set an option you use the -D option. For example, changing the installation prefix from /usr/local to /tmp/testroot you would issue the following command.

mesonconf -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/testroot

Then you would run your build command (usually ninja), which would cause Meson to detect that the build setup has changed and do all the work required to bring your build tree up to date.

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