Since Meson 0.58.0, this can be easily done by simply using the meson devenv -C <builddir> command, and adding the needed environment variables directly in your meson.build files using meson.add_devenv() . Since Meson sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH (or DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH on OSX, PATH on Windows), when you run Totem from your system, it will link to GStreamer libraries (and plugins, see below) from your build directory. In the developer environment, PKG_CONFIG_PATH always includes the directory where Meson wrote those .pc files so you can configure and build applications that use that library.