Using wraptool

Wraptool is a subcommand of Meson that allows you to manage your source dependencies using the WrapDB database. It gives you all things you would expect, such as installing and updating dependencies. The wrap tool works on all platforms, the only limitation is that the wrap definition works on your target platform. If you find some Wraps that don't work, please file bugs or, even better, patches.

All code examples here assume that you are running the commands in your top level source directory. Lines that start with the $ mark are commands to type.

Simple querying

The simplest operation to do is to query the list of packages available. To list them all issue the following command:

$ meson wrap list
box2d
enet
gtest
libjpeg
liblzma
libpng
libxml2
lua
ogg
sqlite
vorbis
zlib

Usually you want to search for a specific package. This can be done with the search command:

$ meson wrap search jpeg
libjpeg

If a package is not found in the list of wraps, the search command will look in all the wrap dependencies:

$ meson wrap search glib-2.0
Dependency glib-2.0 found in wrap glib

To determine which versions of libjpeg are available to install, issue the info command:

$ meson wrap info libjpeg
Available versions of libjpeg:
  9a 2

The first number is the upstream release version, in this case 9a. The second number is the Wrap revision number. They don't relate to anything in particular, but larger numbers imply newer releases. You should always use the newest available release.

Installing dependencies

Installing dependencies is just as straightforward. First just create the subprojects directory at the top of your source tree and issue the install command.

$ meson wrap install libjpeg
Installed libjpeg branch 9a revision 2

Now you can issue a subproject('libjpeg') in your meson.build file to use it.

To check if your projects are up to date you can issue the status command.

$ meson wrap status
Subproject status
 libjpeg up to date. Branch 9a, revision 2.
 zlib not up to date. Have 1.2.8 2, but 1.2.8 4 is available.

In this case zlib has a newer release available. Updating it is straightforward:

$ meson wrap update zlib
Updated zlib to branch 1.2.8 revision 4

Wraptool can do other things besides these. Documentation for these can be found in the command line help, which can be accessed by meson wrap --help.

Automatic dependency fallback

Since 0.64.0 Meson can use WrapDB to automatically find missing dependencies.

The user simply needs to download latest database, the following command stores it in subprojects/wrapdb.json: $ meson wrap update-db

Once the database is available locally, any dependency not found on the system but available in WrapDB will automatically be downloaded.

Automatic fetch of WrapDB subprojects can be disabled by removing the file subprojects/wrapdb.json, or by using --wrap-mode=nodownload.