Built-in options

Meson provides two kinds of options: build options provided by the build files and built-in options that are either universal options, base options, compiler options.

Universal options

A list of these options can be found by running meson --help. All these can be set by passing to meson (aka meson setup) in any of these ways: --option=value, --option value, -Doption=value, or by setting them inside default_options of project() in your meson.build.

For legacy reasons --warnlevel is the cli argument for the warning_level option.

They can also be edited after setup using meson configure.

Installation options are all relative to the prefix, except:

• When the prefix is /usr: sysconfdir defaults to /etc, localstatedir defaults to /var, and sharedstatedir defaults to /var/lib
• When the prefix is /usr/local: localstatedir defaults to /var/local, and sharedstatedir defaults to /var/local/lib

Option	Default value	Description
prefix	see below	Installation prefix
libdir	see below	Library directory
libexecdir	libexec	Library executable directory
bindir	bin	Executable directory
sbindir	sbin	System executable directory
includedir	include	Header file directory
datadir	share	Data file directory
mandir	share/man	Manual page directory
infodir	share/info	Info page directory
localedir	share/locale	Locale data directory
sysconfdir	etc	Sysconf data directory
localstatedir	var	Localstate data directory
sharedstatedir	com	Architecture-independent data directory
werror	false	Treat warnings as errors
warning_level {1, 2, 3}	1	Set the warning level. From 1 = lowest to 3 = highest
layout {mirror,flat}	mirror	Build directory layout.
default-library {shared, static, both}	shared	Default library type.
backend {ninja, vs, vs2010, vs2015, vs2017, xcode}		Backend to use (default: ninja).
stdsplit		Split stdout and stderr in test logs.
errorlogs		Whether to print the logs from failing tests.
cross-file CROSS_FILE		File describing cross compilation environment.
wrap-mode {default, nofallback, nodownload, forcefallback}		Special wrap mode to use

prefix defaults to C:/ on Windows, and /usr/local/ otherwise. You should always override this value.

libdir is automatically detected based on your platform, but the implementation is currently buggy on Linux platforms.

There are various other options to set, for instance the backend to use and the path to the cross-file while cross compiling, which won't be repeated here. Please see the output of meson --help.

Base options

These are set in the same way as universal options, but cannot be shown in the output of meson --help because they depend on both the current platform and the compiler that will be selected. The only way to see them is to setup a builddir and then run meson configure on it with no options.

The following options are available. Note that they may not be available on all platforms or with all compilers:

Option	Default value	Possible values	Description
b_asneeded	true	true, false	Use -Wl,--as-needed when linking
b_bitcode	false	true, false	Embed Apple bitcode, see below
b_colorout	always	auto, always, never	Use colored output
b_coverage	false	true, false	Enable coverage tracking
b_vscrt	from_buildtype	none, md, mdd, mt, mtd, from_buildtype	VS runtime library to use (since 0.48.0)
b_lundef	true	true, false	Don't allow undefined symbols when linking
b_lto	false	true, false	Use link time optimization
b_ndebug	false	true, false, if-release	Disable asserts
b_pch	true	true, false	Use precompiled headers
b_pgo	off	off, generate, use	Use profile guided optimization
b_sanitize	none	see below	Code sanitizer to use
b_staticpic	true	true, false	Build static libraries as position independent
b_pie	false	true, false	Build position-independent executables (since 0.49.0)

The value of b_sanitize can be one of: none, address, thread, undefined, memory, address,undefined.

Notes about Apple Bitcode support

b_bitcode will pass -fembed-bitcode while compiling and will pass -Wl,-bitcode_bundle while linking. These options are incompatible with b_asneeded, so that option will be silently disabled.

Shared modules will not have bitcode embedded because -Wl,-bitcode_bundle is incompatible with both -bundle and -Wl,-undefined,dynamic_lookup which are necessary for shared modules to work.

Compiler options

Same caveats as base options above.

The following options are available. Note that both the options themselves and the possible values they can take will depend on the target platform or compiler being used:

Option	Default value	Possible values	Description
c_args		free-form comma-separated list	C compile arguments to use
c_link_args		free-form comma-separated list	C link arguments to use
c_std	none	none, c89, c99, c11, gnu89, gnu99, gnu11	C language standard to use
c_winlibs	see below	free-form comma-separated list	Standard Windows libs to link against
cpp_args		free-form comma-separated list	C++ compile arguments to use
cpp_link_args		free-form comma-separated list	C++ link arguments to use
cpp_std	none	none, c++98, c++03, c++11, c++14, c++17, c++1z, gnu++03, gnu++11, gnu++14, gnu++17, gnu++1z	C++ language standard to use
cpp_debugstl	false	true, false	C++ STL debug mode
cpp_eh	sc	none, a, s, sc	C++ exception handling type
cpp_winlibs	see below	free-form comma-separated list	Standard Windows libs to link against

The default values of c_winlibs and cpp_winlibs are in compiler-specific argument forms, but the libraries are: kernel32, user32, gdi32, winspool, shell32, ole32, oleaut32, uuid, comdlg32, advapi32.

c_args, cpp_args, c_link_args, and cpp_link_args only affect native builds, when cross compiling they will not be applied to binaries or libraries targeting the host system, only those being run on the build system.