# Getting meson

Meson is implemented in Python 3, and requires 3.5 or newer. If your operating
system provides a package manager, you should install it with that. For
platforms that don't have a package manager, you need to download it from
[Python's home page]. See below for [platform-specific Python3
quirks](#Platform-specific_install_quirks).

## Downloading Meson

Meson releases can be downloaded from the [GitHub release page], and you can
run `./meson.py` from inside a release or the git repository itself without
doing anything special.

On Windows, if you did not install Python with the installer options that make
Python scripts executable, you will have to run `python /path/to/meson.py`,
where `python` is Python 3.5 or newer.

The newest development code can be obtained directly from [Git], and we strive
to ensure that it will always be working and usable. All commits go through
a pull-request process that runs CI and tests several platforms.

## Installing Meson with pip

Meson is available in the [Python Package Index] and can be installed with
`pip3 install meson` which requires root and will install it system-wide.

Alternatively, you can use `pip3 install --user meson` which will install it
for your user and does not require any special privileges. This will install
the package in `~/.local/`, so you will have to add `~/.local/bin` to your
`PATH`.

## Installing Meson and Ninja with the MSI installer

We provide an MSI installer on the [GitHub release page] that can be used to
install both Meson and Ninja at once for Windows. It also contains an embedded
copy of Python, so scripts that use the [Python module](Python-module.md) and
do not have any external dependencies will continue to work as expected.

Please note that this is a new feature, so bug reports are expected and welcome!

## Dependencies

In the most common case, you will need the [Ninja executable] for using the
`ninja` backend, which is the default in Meson. This backend can be used on all
platforms and with all toolchains, including GCC, Clang, Visual Studio, MinGW,
ICC, ARMCC, etc.

You can use the version provided by your package manager if possible, otherwise
download the binary executable from the [Ninja project's release
page](https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/releases).

If you will only use the Visual Studio backend (`--backend=vs`) to generate
Visual Studio solutions on Windows or the XCode backend (`--backend=xcode`) to
generate XCode projects on macOS, you do not need Ninja.

# Platform-specific install quirks

## Windows Python3 quirks

When installing Python 3, it is highly recommended (but not required) that you
select the installer options as follows:

![installer step 1](images/py3-install-1.png "Enable 'Add Python 3.6 to PATH' and click 'Customize installation'")
![installer step 2](images/py3-install-2.png "Optional Features: ensure 'pip' is enabled")
![installer step 3](images/py3-install-3.png "Advanced Options: enable 'Install for all users'")

With this, you will have `python` and `pip` in `PATH`, and you can install
Meson with pip. You will also be able to directly run `meson` in any shell on
Windows instead of having to run `py -3` with the full path to the `meson.py`
script.

## MSYS2 Python3 quirks

If you are using MSYS2 on Windows as your development environment, please make
sure that you **do not use** the `msys/python` package to provide Python 3. Use
either `mingw32/mingw-w64-i686-python3` or `mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-python3`
depending on which MinGW target you are building for.

  [GitHub release page]: https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/releases
  [Python Package Index]: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/meson/
  [Git]: https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson
  [Python's home page]: https://www.python.org/downloads/
  [Ninja executable]: https://ninja-build.org/
