Building from source using Meson
If you just want to use GStreamer, please visit the download page. We provide pre-built binaries for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS.
This is the recommended setup for developers who want to work on the GStreamer code itself and/or modify it, or application developers who wish to quickly try a feature which isn't yet in a released version of GStreamer.
Note: This only applies for doing GStreamer development on Linux, Windows and macOS. If you:
- Want to do GStreamer development for Android, iOS, or UWP, or
- Have to build GStreamer packages for distribution or deployment, or
- Need plugins with external dependencies without Meson ports
Please refer to Building using Cerbero, which can be used to build a specific GStreamer release or to build unreleased GStreamer code.
What are Meson, gst-build and the GStreamer monorepo?
The Meson build system is a portable build system which is fast and
meant to be more user friendly than alternatives. It generates build
instructions which can then be executed by ninja
. The GStreamer
project uses it for all subprojects.
In September 2021 all of the main GStreamer modules were merged into a single code repository, the GStreamer mono repo which lives in the main GStreamer git repository, and this is where all GStreamer development happens nowadays for GStreamer version 1.19/1.20 and later.
Before the mono repository merge the different GStreamer modules lived in
separate git repositories and there was a separate meta-builder project
called gst-build
to download and build all the subprojects.
This is what you should use if you want to build or develop against older
stable branches such as GStreamer 1.16 or 1.18.
If you want to build or develop against upcoming development or stable branches
you should use the main
branch of the GStreamer module containing the mono
repository.
In the following sections we will only talk about the GStreamer mono repo,
but gst-build
works pretty much the same way, the only difference being
that it would download the various GStreamer submodules as well.
Setting up the build with Meson
In order to build the current GStreamer development version, which will become the 1.20 stable branch in the near future, clone the GStreamer mono repository:
git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer.git
cd gstreamer
Or if you have developer access to the repositories:
git clone git@gitlab.freedesktop.org:gstreamer/gstreamer.git
cd gstreamer
If you want to build the stable 1.18 or 1.16 branches, clone gst-build
:
git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gst-build.git
cd gst-build
Repository layout
The repository contains a few notable scripts and directories:
-
meson.build
is the top-level build definition which will recursively configure all dependencies. It also defines some helper commands allowing you to have an uninstalled development environment or easily update git repositories for the GStreamer modules. -
subprojects/
is the directory containing GStreamer modules and a selection of dependencies.
Basic meson and ninja usage
Configuring a module (or several in one go when in gst-build) is done by executing:
meson <build_directory>
The build_directory
is where all the build instructions and output will be
located (This is also called "out of directory" building). If the directory is
not created it will be done so at this point. Note that calling meson
without
any command argument is implicitely calling the meson setup
command (i.e. to
do the initial configuration of a project).
There is only one restriction regarding the location of the build_directory
:
it can't be the same as the source directory (i.e. where you cloned your module).
It can be outside of that directory or below/within that directory though.
Once meson is done configuring, you can either:
-
enter the specified build directory and run ninja.
cd <build_directory> ninja
-
or instead of switching to the build directory every time you wish to execute
ninja
commands, you can just specify the build directory as an argument. The advantage of this option is that you can run it from anywhere (instead of changing to the ninja directory)ninja -C </path/to/build_directory>
This will build everything from that module (and subprojects if building gst-build or the mono repository).
Note: You do not need to re-run meson
when you modify source files, you just
need to re-run ninja
. If you build/configuration files changed, ninja
will
figure out on its own that meson
needs to be re-run and will do that
automatically.
Entering the "uninstalled" environment
GStreamer is made of several tools, plugins and components. In order to make it
easier for development and testing, there is a target (provided by gst-build
or the mono repository, and in future directly by meson
itself) which will
setup environment variables accordingly so that you can use all the
build results directly.
ninja -C <path/to/build_directory> devenv
You will notice the prompt changed accordingly. You can then run any GStreamer
tool you just built directly (like gst-inspect-1.0
, gst-launch-1.0
, ...).
Working with multiple branches or remotes
It is not uncommon to track multiple git remote repositories (such as the official upstream repositories and your personal clone on gitlab).
In the gstreamer mono repository, just add your personal git remotes as you would do with any other git repository, e.g.:
git remote add personal git@gitlab.freedesktop.org:awesomehacker/gstreamer.git
git fetch
In gst-build (for 1.16/1.18 branches), you can add your personal git remotes in the relevant subproject directory (and that would have to be done for each subproject of interest, since the old 1.16/1.18 branches live in separate git repositories), e.g.:
cd subprojects/gstreamer/
git remote add personal git@gitlab.freedesktop.org:awesomehacker/gstreamer.git
git fetch
Configuration
You can list all the available options of a meson
project by using the
configure command:
meson configure
If you have an already configured build directory, you can provide that and you will additionally get the configured values for that build:
meson configure <build-directory>
That command will list for each option:
- The name of the option
- The default (or configured) value of the option
- The possible values
- The description of that option
The values with
auto
mean thatmeson
will figure out at configuration time the proper value (for example, if you have the available development packages to build a certain plugin).You will also see values with
<inherited from main project>
. This is mostly used for options which are generic options. For example thedoc
option is present at the top-level, and also on every submodules (ex:gstreamer:doc
). Generally you only want to set the value of that option once, and all submodules will inherit from that.
You can then provide those options to meson
when configuring the build with
-D<option_name>=<option_value>
. For example, if one does not want to build the
rust plugins in gst-build
(rs
option), you would do:
meson -Drs=disabled <build-directory>
You can also peek at the meson_options.txt
files and subproject/xyz/meson_options.txt
files which is where the various project specific build options are listed.
These do not include all the standard Meson options however.
Running tests
Running the unit tests is done by calling meson test
from the build directory,
or meson test -C <path/to/build_directory>
. If there are any failures you can
have a look at the file specified at the end or you can run meson test --print-errorlogs
which will show you the logs of the failing test after
execution.
You can also execute just a subset of tests by specifying the name name. For
example meson test gst_gstpad
. The complete list of tests is available with
meson test --list
.
If the gst-devtools
submodule is built, you can also use
gst-validate-launcher
gst-validate for running tests.
gst-validate-launcher check.gst*
Going further
More details are available in the GStreamer mono repo README or (for the older 1.16/1.18 branches) in the gst-build documentation.
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