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xPack Meson Build v0.59.4-1 released

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

Version 0.59.4-1 is a new release; it follows the upstream release. It also adds support for Apple Silicon and uses the latest build scripts.

The xPack Meson Build is a standalone cross-platform binary distribution of Meson Build.

There are separate binaries for Windows (x64 and x86), macOS (x64, arm64) 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.

Prerequisites​

  • x86/x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.15 or higher (like Ubuntu 12 or later, Debian 8 or later, RedHat/CentOS 7 later, Fedora 20 or later, etc)
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.23 or higher (like Ubuntu 16 or later, Debian 9 or later, RedHat/CentOS 8 or later, Fedora 24 or later, etc)
  • x86/x64 Windows: Windows 7 with the Universal C Runtime (UCRT), Windows 8, Windows 10
  • x64 macOS: 10.13 or later
  • arm64 macOS: 11.6 or later

Install​

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

xpm install @xpack-dev-tools/meson-build@0.59.4-1.1 -verbose

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

Compliance​

The xPack Meson Build generally follows the official Meson Build releases.

The current version is based on:

  • Meson Build release 0.59.4 from Oct 28th, 2021.

Changes​

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

Bug fixes​

  • none

Enhancements​

  • none

Known problems​

  • none

Embedded Python​

To simplify dependency management, this release embeds a Python 3.9.7 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/python3.9
  • lib/python3.9/lib-dynload (the platform dependent files)

The Meson files are located in:

  • lib/python3.9/mesonbuild

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

Documentation​

The original documentation is available from:

Build​

The binaries for all supported platforms (Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux) 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.

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.

CI tests​

Before publishing, a set of simple tests were performed on an exhaustive set of platforms. The results are available from:

Checksums​

The SHA-256 hashes for the files are:

7b763d577ad058a918118f50e4970df4a651a579dcea0e7d4bb136232909fc6a
xpack-meson-build-0.59.4-1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.59.4-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.59.4-1-linux-arm.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.59.4-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.59.4-1-linux-ia32.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.59.4-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

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xpack-meson-build-0.59.4-1-win32-ia32.zip

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xpack-meson-build-0.59.4-1-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices​

32-bit support​

Support for 32-bit x86 GNU/Linux and x86 Windows will most probably be dropped in 2022. Support for 32-bit Arm GNU/Linux will be preserved for a while, due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems.

GNU/Linux minimum requirements​

Support for RedHat 7 will most probably be dropped in 2022, and the minimum requirement will be raised to GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18 and RedHat 8.

Download analytics​

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