Persistent native environments

New in 0.49.0

Meson has cross files for describing cross compilation environments, for describing native environments it has equivalent "native files".

Natives describe the build machine, and can be used to override properties of non-cross builds, as well as properties that are marked as "native" in a cross build.

There are a couple of reasons you might want to use a native file to keep a persistent environment:

• To build with a non-default native tool chain (such as clang instead of gcc)
• To use a non-default version of another binary, such as yacc, or llvm-config

Using a native file

During the setup phase, use the native file as such:

meson setup --native-file my-native-file.ini builddir/

Changing native file settings

All of the rules about cross files and changed settings apply to native files as well, see here

Defining the environment

See the config-files section, for options shared by cross and native files.

Native file locations

Like cross files, native files may be installed to user or system wide locations, defined as:

• $XDG_DATA_DIRS/meson/native (/usr/local/share/meson/native:/usr/share/meson/native if $XDG_DATA_DIRS is undefined)
• $XDG_DATA_HOME/meson/native ($HOME/.local/share/meson/native if $XDG_DATA_HOME is undefined)

The order of locations tried is as follows:

• A file relative to the local dir
• The user local location
• The system wide locations in order

These files are not intended to be shipped by distributions, unless they are specifically for distribution packaging, they are mainly intended for developers.