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xPack Meson Build v1.3.0-1 released

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

Version 1.3.0-1 is a new release; it follows the upstream release.

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

There are separate binaries for Windows (Intel 64-bit), macOS (Intel 64-bit, Apple Silicon 64-bit) and GNU/Linux (Intel 64-bit, Arm 32/64-bit).

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​

  • x64 GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • arm64/arm GNU/Linux: any system with GLIBC 2.27 or higher (like Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu 18 or later, Debian 10 or later, RedHat 8 or later, Fedora 29 or later, etc)
  • 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 full details of installing the xPack Meson Build on various platforms are presented 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 1.3.0 from 19 Nov 2023.

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 3.11.4 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/python3.11
  • lib/python3.11/lib-dynload (the platform dependent files)

The Meson files are located in:

  • lib/python3.11/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.

For the prerequisites and more details on the build procedure, please see the Maintainer Info 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:

57459d3b9b705f5046b4b9a86a0c94a888cd9ac082cf10080671df318773f121
xpack-meson-build-1.3.0-1-darwin-arm64.tar.gz

a033a33fa6c2beb101e1ac784d01bb57f2c7b5f2a8193c7eba301abebc94ff43
xpack-meson-build-1.3.0-1-darwin-x64.tar.gz

3040baf4f7e54066576c90971f33459c55fb3acfb88d30183834b1faea7cde9a
xpack-meson-build-1.3.0-1-linux-arm.tar.gz

5384b0ee60660117902e99f57ae3fdc8db06bf115a228289ed41656203d23e9c
xpack-meson-build-1.3.0-1-linux-arm64.tar.gz

1fe85090bcad80490c18ee2b39be9b4877d9704cc1dd30f3cc5625d0736c6543
xpack-meson-build-1.3.0-1-linux-x64.tar.gz

80e580ba52dc4c9e20fbd768df80f261daf9b62939ef291559c68f60ab317147
xpack-meson-build-1.3.0-1-win32-x64.zip

Deprecation notices​

32-bit support​

Support for 32-bit Intel Linux and Intel Windows was dropped in 2022. Support for 32-bit Arm Linux (armv7l) will be preserved for a while, due to the large user base of 32-bit Raspberry Pi systems.

Linux minimum requirements​

Support for RedHat 7 was dropped in 2022 and the minimum requirement was raised to GLIBC 2.27, available starting with Ubuntu 18, Debian 10 and RedHat 8.

Pre-deprecation notice for Ubuntu 18.04​

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver reached the end of the standard five-year maintenance window for Long-Term Support (LTS) release on 31 May 2023.

As a courtesy, the xPack GNU/Linux releases will continue to be based on Ubuntu 18.04 for another year.

From 2025 onwards, the GNU/Linux binaries will be built on Debian 10, (GLIBC 2.28), and are also expected to run on RedHat 8.

Users are urged to update their build and test infrastructure to ensure a smooth transition to the next xPack releases.

Download analytics​

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