Mesonic: A Vim plugin for Meson build system

Mesonic is a plugin that uses Vim compiler infrastructure to integrate Meson build system into an editor with special handling of out-of-source builds. It sets 'makeprg', 'errorformat' options and provides syntax highlighting for meson.build files.

Usage

Use :MesonInit to initialise build directory for the first time. After that you can issue :make command as usual, which produces correct quickfix list no matter what current directory is. All commands work as expected from any subdirectory of your project.

You can customise meson and ninja commands with the following variables, which can be either global or buffer local. Defaults are listed below.

let b:meson_command = 'meson'
let b:meson_ninja_command = 'meson compile'  " ninja in old Meson versions

If you want to switch between build directories, issue :MesonInit command with an argument. For example, to switch to build-debug directory, issue

:MesonInit build-debug         " switch for the current buffer
:MesonInit! build-debug        " switch for the current and new buffers
:bufdo MesonInit! build-debug  " switch for all existing and new buffers

The directory will be initialised if it does not exist or does not contain build.ninja file. As of the current version Meson options can be added only via b:meson_command variable.

Meson options can be changed via :MesonConfigure command:

" change install prefix to $HOME/.local
:MesonConfigure -Dprefix=$HOME/.local

" debug build with address sanitizer
:MesonConfigure -Dbuildtype=debug -Db_sanitize=address -Dcpp_args=""

" fully optimised build
:MesonConfigure -Dbuildtype=release -Db_sanitize=none -Dcpp_args="-march=native"

" show current configuration
:MesonConfigure

Meson tests, benchmarks and run targets can be executed via the following commands.

:MesonRun cppcheck             " run ninja cppcheck
:MesonRun sha1_benchmark 1 2 3 " run sha1_benchmark executable with arguments 1 2 3
:MesonRun                      " show all available targets
:MesonTest sha1                " run meson test sha1
:MesonTest                     " run all tests
:MesonTest --suite sha         " run all tests from suite sha
:MesonBenchmark                " run all benchmarks
:MesonBenchmark sha1           " run sha1 benchmark

The plugin completes partially written arguments and current argument values, just hit TAB at any point in the command line.

The usual file navigation commands, namely gf, Ctrl+wf, and Ctrl+wgf, work for subdir() constructs. To go to meson.build file in the parent directory simply use gb or Backspace. Also Mesonic does completion for member functions of all global objects (meson and *_machine). Type object name, dot and Ctrl+x+o to trigger function name completion. Further customisations are documented in the help file: :help mesonic.

Syntastic integration

Mesonic provides a Syntastic syntax checker for the C language. In order to use it, put the following (or similar) into your .vimrc.

" If there's a `meson.build` file, use meson for linting.
autocmd FileType c call ConsiderMesonForLinting()
function ConsiderMesonForLinting()
    if filereadable('meson.build')
        let g:syntastic_c_checkers = ['meson']
    endif
endfunction

Limitations

Mesonic assumes that build directory is a subdirectory of top-level directory of your project, i.e. build directory is located in the same directory where your main meson.build file is. In all other cases it may produce wrong file paths in quickfix list.

Contributing

This plugin was created as a result of my passion for Vim and C++ programming, and as a consequence of reading "Learn Vimscript the Hard Way" by Steve Losh. Feel free to contribute or post a bug at GitHub project page (here).

License

Mesonic is GPL licensed.