Project templates

To make it easier for new developers to start working, Meson ships a tool to generate the basic setup of different kinds of projects. This functionality can be accessed with the meson init command. A typical project setup would go like this:

$ mkdir project_name
$ cd project_name
$ meson init --language=c --name=myproject --version=0.1

This would create the build definitions for a helloworld type project. The result can be compiled as usual. For example it could be done like this:

$ meson setup builddir
$ meson compile -C builddir

The generator has many different projects and settings. They can all be listed by invoking the command meson init --help.

This feature is available since Meson version 0.45.0.

Generate a build script for an existing project

With meson init you can generate a build script for an existing project with existing project files by running the command in the root directory of your project. Meson currently supports this feature for executable, and jar projects.

Build after generation of template

It is possible to have Meson generate a build directory from the meson init command without running meson setup. This is done by passing -b or --build switch.

$ mkdir project_name
$ cd project_name
$ meson init --language=c --name=myproject --version=0.1 --build