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xPack Meson Build v0.56.2-1 released

· 5 min read
Liviu Ionescu (ilg)
Liviu Ionescu (ilg)

Version 0.56.2-1 is a new release of the xPack Meson Build package, following the Meson release.

The xPack Meson Build is the xPack distribution of the Meson build system.

There are separate binaries for Windows (x64 and x86), macOS (x64) and GNU/Linux (x64 and x86, arm64 and arm).

Raspberry Pi

The main targets for the GNU/Linux Arm binaries are the Raspberry Pi class devices (armv7l and aarch64; armv6 is not supported).

Download​

The binary files are available from GitHub Releases.

Install​

The easiest way to install this specific version, is by using xpm:

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/meson-build@0.56.2-1.1 --verbose

Comprehensive instructions for installing xPack Meson Build on different platforms can be found in the Install Guide.

Compliance​

The xPack Meson Build is based on the official Meson build system, without any changes.

The current version is based on:

  • Meson release 0.56.2 from Jan 10th, 2021.

Bug fixes​

  • none

Enhancements​

  • none

Changes​

Compared to the upstream version, there are no functional changes.

Embedded Python​

To simplify dependency management, this release embeds a Python 3.8.6 instance.

The meson executable is a standard ELF/EXE which includes the Python run-time; the main() function prepares the Python environment and then invokes the Meson main:

  PyRun_SimpleString("from mesonbuild import mesonmain\n");
  PyRun_SimpleString("sys.exit(mesonmain.main())\n");

The Python library is located in the standard location:

  • lib/python3.8
  • lib/python3.8/lib-dynload (the platform dependent files)

The Meson files are located in:

  • lib/python3.8/mesonbuild

To speed up execution, all Python files are compiled and are available only as .pyc.

Known problems​

  • [#3]: The macOS version fails to start properly with multiple symbolic links.

Documentation​

The original documentation is available from:

Supported platforms​

Binaries for Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux are provided.

The binaries were built using the xPack Build Box (XBB), a set of build environments based on slightly older distributions, that should be compatible with most recent systems.

  • x86/x64 GNU/Linux: all binaries were built with GCC 9.3, running in an Ubuntu 12 Docker container
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: all binaries were built with GCC 9.3, running in an Ubuntu 16 Docker container (added in mid-2020)
  • x86/x64 Windows: all binaries were built with mingw-w64 GCC 9.3, running in an Ubuntu 12 Docker container
  • x64 macOS: all binaries were built with GCC 9.3, running in a separate folder on macOS 10.10.5.

Build​

The scripts used to build this distribution are in:

  • distro-info/scripts

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the README-MAINTAINER page.

Travis tests​

The first set of tests were performed on Travis, by running a simple script to check if the binaries start on a wide range of platforms and distributions:

Tests​

TBD

Checksums​

The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:

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xpack-meson-build-0.56.2-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.56.2-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.56.2-1-linux-arm.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.56.2-1-linux-ia32.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.56.2-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.56.2-1-win32-ia32.zip

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xpack-meson-build-0.56.2-1-win32-x64.zip

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Credit to Shields IO for the badges and to Somsubhra/github-release-stats for the individual file counters.