Building ModemManager 1.18 or later with Meson

The first stable series with support for building with the meson suite is 1.18. All the older stable series before 1.18 exclusively used the GNU autotools build system.

Building from a git checkout

When using meson, the builds are always triggered from git checkouts, there is no source release tarball involved. The basic build steps would be as follows:

  $ git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mobile-broadband/ModemManager.git
  $ cd ModemManager
  $ meson setup build --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc
  $ ninja -C build

Optional switches

Additional optional switches that may be given to the meson command above would be:

• In Debian/Ubuntu systems the default location for libraries depends on the architecture of the build, so instead of the default /usr/lib path that would be in effect due to --prefix=/usr, the user should also give an explicit --libdir path pointing to the correct location. E.g. on a 64bit Ubuntu/Debian build, the user would use --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu.
• If the MBIM protocol support is required, the additional -Dmbim=true should be given. Omitting this switch will imply auto-detecting whether the feature can be built with the already installed dependencies.
• If the QMI protocol support is required, the additional -Dqmi=true should be given. Omitting this switch will imply auto-detecting whether the feature can be built with the already installed dependencies.
• If the QRTR protocol support is required, the additional -Dqrtr=true should be given. Omitting this switch will imply auto-detecting whether the feature can be built with the already installed dependencies.
• The suspend/resume handling is enabled by default. In order to disable it, the additional -Dsystemd_suspend_resume=false should be given.
• The gtk-doc documentation is disabled by default. In order to enable it, the additional -Dgtk_doc=true switch should be given.
• The GObject introspection support for the libmm-glib library is enabled by default. In order to disable it, the additional -Dintrospection=false switch should be given.
• The bash-completion support is enabled by default. In order to disable it, the additional -Dbash_completion=false switch should be given.
• The default build type in meson if none explicitly specified is debug, which means debug symbols are included and optimization is fully disabled. The --buildtype=release switch can be used to remove debug symbols and to enable optimization level to the maximum.

An example project build using all the above optional switches could be:

  $ meson setup build                     \
      --prefix=/usr                       \
      --sysconfdir=/etc                   \
      --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu  \
      --buildtype=release                 \
      -Dqmi=true                          \
      -Dmbim=true                         \
      -Dqrtr=true                         \
      -Dsystemd_suspend_resume=false      \
      -Dgtk_doc=true                      \
      -Dintrospection=false               \
      -Dbash_completion=false
  $ ninja -C build

Installing

The installation on the prefix selected during meson setup can be done with the following command:

  $ sudo ninja -C build install

Please note that the command above will install the library in the system default path for libraries, possibly overwriting any previous libmm-glib library that may already exist from a package manager installed package. See the FAQ section for comments on how to install in /usr/local instead.

Uninstalling

If you have manually installed the project with the steps above, it can be uninstalled in the same way:

  $ sudo ninja -C build uninstall

If the manual install overwrote the package manager installed files, it is suggested to force a re-install of the corresponding packages at this point, so that the system is not left with missing files.