Meson compatibility

meson-python tightly integrates with Meson to produce Python wheels and sdists. Therefore, correct operation depends on functionality implemented by Meson. meson-python strives to maintain compatibility with as old as possible Meson releases. However, some functionality is available only with more recent Meson versions.

0.63.3

Meson is 0.63.3 is the minimum required version.

1.1.0

Meson 1.1.0 or later is required to support the exclude_files and exclude_directories arguments to Meson install_subdir and similar installation functions. On older Meson versions, these arguments have no effect.

1.2.3

Python 3.12 Meson 1.2.3 and later do not rely anymore on distutils and is required to support support Python 3.12 and later where the distutils modules has been removed from the Python standard library. meson-python depends on this versions of Meson, when installed on Python 3.12, thus packages using meson-python do not need to add an explicit version requirement.

1.3.0

Meson 1.3.0 or later is required for compiling extension modules targeting the Python limited API.

Build front-ends by default build packages in an isolated Python environment where build dependencies are installed. Most often, unless a package or its build dependencies declare explicitly a version constraint, this results in the most recent version of the build dependencies to be installed. However, if a package uses functionalities implemented only in combination with a specific Meson version, it is recommended to explicitly declare a version requirement in pyproject.toml. For example:

[build-system]
build-backend = 'mesonpy'
requires = [
  'meson-python',
  'meson >= 1.1.0',
]