generator()

See also: custom_target()

This function creates a generator object that can be used to run custom compilation commands. The only positional argument is the executable to use. It can either be a self-built executable or one returned by find_program.

The template strings passed to all the keyword arguments accept the following special substitutions:

• @PLAINNAME@: the complete input file name, e.g: foo.c becomes foo.c (unchanged)
• @BASENAME@: the base of the input filename, e.g.: foo.c.y becomes foo.c (extension is removed)

Each string passed to the output keyword argument must be constructed using one or both of these two substitutions.

In addition to the above substitutions, the arguments keyword argument also accepts the following:

• @OUTPUT@: the full path to the output file
• @INPUT@: the full path to the input file
• @DEPFILE@: the full path to the depfile
• @SOURCE_DIR@: the full path to the root of the source tree
• @CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR@: this is the directory where the currently processed meson.build is located in
• @BUILD_DIR@: the full path to the root of the build dir where the output will be placed

NOTE: Generators should only be used for outputs that will only be used as inputs for a build_target() or a custom_target(). When you use the processed output of a generator in multiple targets, the generator will be run multiple times to create outputs for each target. Each output will be created in a target-private directory @BUILD_DIR@.

If you want to generate files for general purposes such as for generating headers to be used by several sources, or data that will be installed, and so on, use a custom_target() instead.

# See also: custom_target()
generator generator(
  exe | external_program exe,     # Executable for the command to run

  # Keyword arguments:
  arguments : array[str]                                  # An array of template strings that will be the command line arguments passed to the executable
  capture   : bool                                        # When this argument is set to true, Meson captures `stdout`
  depends   : array[build_tgt | custom_tgt | custom_idx]  # An array of build targets that must be built before
  depfile   : str                                         # A template string pointing to a dependency file that a
  output    : array[str]                                  # Template string (or array of template strings) defining
)

Arguments

The function generator() accepts the following positional arguments:

Finally, generator() accepts the following keyword arguments: