short-description: Installing targets ...
By default Meson will not install anything. Build targets can be installed by tagging them as installable in the definition.
project('install', 'c')
shared_library('mylib', 'libfile.c', install : true)
There is usually no need to specify install paths or the like. Meson
will automatically install it to the standards-conforming location. In
this particular case the executable is installed to the bin
subdirectory of the install prefix. However if you wish to override
the install dir, you can do that with the install_dir
argument.
executable('prog', 'prog.c', install : true, install_dir : 'my/special/dir')
Other install commands are the following.
install_headers('header.h', subdir : 'projname') # -> include/projname/header.h
install_man('foo.1') # -> share/man/man1/foo.1.gz
install_data('datafile.dat', install_dir : join_paths(get_option('datadir'), 'progname')) # -> share/progname/datafile.dat
install_data()
supports rename of the file since 0.46.0.
# file.txt -> {datadir}/{projectname}/new-name.txt
install_data('file.txt', rename : 'new-name.txt')
# file1.txt -> share/myapp/dir1/data.txt
# file2.txt -> share/myapp/dir2/data.txt
install_data(['file1.txt', 'file2.txt'],
rename : ['dir1/data.txt', 'dir2/data.txt'],
install_dir : 'share/myapp')
Sometimes you want to copy an entire subtree directly. For this use
case there is the install_subdir
command, which can be used like
this.
install_subdir('mydir', install_dir : 'include') # mydir subtree -> include/mydir
Most of the time you want to install files relative to the install
prefix. Sometimes you need to go outside of the prefix (such as writing
files to /etc
instead of /usr/etc
. This can be accomplished by
giving an absolute install path.
install_data(sources : 'foo.dat', install_dir : '/etc') # -> /etc/foo.dat
Sometimes you need to do more than just install basic targets. Meson makes this easy by allowing you to specify a custom script to execute at install time. As an example, here is a script that generates an empty file in a custom directory.
#!/bin/sh
mkdir "${DESTDIR}/${MESON_INSTALL_PREFIX}/mydir"
touch "${DESTDIR}/${MESON_INSTALL_PREFIX}/mydir/file.dat"
As you can see, Meson sets up some environment variables to help you
write your script (DESTDIR
is not set by Meson, it is inherited from
the outside environment). In addition to the install prefix, Meson
also sets the variables MESON_SOURCE_ROOT
and MESON_BUILD_ROOT
.
Telling Meson to run this script at install time is a one-liner.
meson.add_install_script('myscript.sh')
The argument is the name of the script file relative to the current subdirectory.
Sometimes you need to install to a different directory than the
install prefix. This is most common when building rpm or deb
packages. This is done with the DESTDIR
environment variable and it
is used just like with other build systems:
$ DESTDIR=/path/to/staging/area ninja install
The default install target (executed via, e.g., ninja install
) does
installing with reasonable default options. More control over the
install behaviour can be achieved with the meson install
command,
that has been available since 0.47.0.
For example, if you wish to install the current setup without rebuilding the code (which the default install target always does) and only installing those files that have changed, you would run this command in the build tree:
$ meson install --no-rebuild --only-changed