C++ utilities

Common C++ classes and routines used by my applications such as argument parser, IO and conversion utilities.

Features

The library utilizes:

• parsing command-line arguments and providing Bash completion
• dealing with dates and times
• conversion of primitive data types to byte-buffers and vice versa (litte-endian and big-endian)
• common string conversions/operations, eg.
  • character set conversion via iconv
  • split, join, find and replace
  • conversion from number to string and vice verca
  • encoding/decoding base-64
  • building string without multiple heap allocations ("string builder")
• IO
  • reading/writing primitive data types of various sizes (little-endian and big-endian)
  • reading/writing terminated strings and size-prefixed strings
  • reading/writing INI files
  • reading bitwise
• building with CMake by providing some modules and templates

Build instructions

Requirements

Build-only dependencies

• C++ compiler supporting C++14, tested with
  • clang++ to compile for GNU/Linux and MacOS X
  • g++ to compile for GNU/Linux and Windows
• CMake (at least 3.3.0)
• cppunit for unit tests (optional)
• Doxygen for API documentation (optional)
• Graphviz for diagrams in the API documentation (optional)
• clang-format for tidying (optional)
• llvm-profdata, llvm-cov and cppunit for source-based code coverage analysis (optional)

Runtime dependencies

• The c++utilities library itself only needs
  • C++ standard library supporting C++14, tested with
    • libstdc++ under GNU/Linux, Windows and MacOS X
    • libc++ under GNU/Linux
  • iconv (might be part of glibc or provided as extra library)
• For dependencies of my other projects check the README.md of these projects.

How to build

Just run:

cd "path/to/build/directory"
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
      -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/final/install/location" \
      "path/to/projectdirectory"
make tidy # format source files (optional, must be enabled via CLANG_FORMAT_ENABLED)
make
make check # build and run tests (optional)
make coverage # build and run tests measuring test coverage (optional, must be enabled via CLANG_SOURCE_BASED_COVERAGE_ENABLED)
make apidoc # build API documentation (optional)
make DESTDIR="/temporary/install/location" install

General notes

• The make option -j can be used for concurrent compilation.
• LIB_SUFFIX, LIB_SUFFIX_32 and LIB_SUFFIX_64 can be set to specify a suffix for the library directory, eg. lib64 or lib32. The 32/64 variants are only used when building for 32/64-bit architecture.
• By default the build system will build shared libs. To build also static libraries, set ENABLE_STATIC_LIBS=ON. To disable building shared libs set DISABLE_SHARED_LIBS=ON.
• By default the build system will prefer linking against shared libraries. To force linking against static libraries set STATIC_LINKAGE=ON. However, this will only affect applications. To force linking statically when building shared libraries set STATIC_LIBRARY_LINKAGE=ON.
• For more detailed documentation, see the documentation about build variables (in directory doc and in Doxygen version accessible via "Related Pages").
• The repository PKGBUILDs contains build scripts for GNU/Linux, Windows and MacOS X in form of Arch Linux packages. These scripts can be used example also when building under another platform.

Building for Windows

• Building for Windows with GCC as cross compiler and mingw-w64 can be simplified by using a small Cmake wrapper and a custom toolchain file:

  ${_arch}-cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/final/install/location" "path/to/source/directory"
  make DESTDIR="/temporary/install/location" install-mingw-w64-strip
  

• To create the *.ico file for the application icon ffmpeg/avconv is required.

• The target install-mingw-w64-strip can be used as in the example above to only install files suitable for creating a cross-compiler package and additionally strip the binaries.

Building for MacOS X

• Building for MacOS X is possible using osxcross.
• Here is a Homebrew formula to build Tag Editor (without GUI): https://gist.github.com/rakkesh/0b13b8fca5dd1d57d98537ef1dd2e0dd

Development builds

During development I find it useful to build all required projects (for instace c++utilities, qtutilities, tagparser and tageditor) as one big project.

This can be easily achieved by using CMake's add_subdirectory() function. For project files see the repository subdirs. For an example, see build instructions for Syncthing Tray.

For a debug build, just use -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug.

Arch Linux package

The repository PKGBUILDs contains files for building Arch Linux packages.

PKGBUILD files to cross compile for Windows using mingw-w64 and for MacOS X using osxcross are also included.

RPM packages

RPM *.spec files can be found at openSUSE Build Servide. Packages are available for x86_64, aarch64 and armv7l. Since GCC provided by Leap is too old, only Tumbleweed packages are up-to-date.

Gentoo

Packages are provided by perfect7gentleman; checkout his repository.

Cygwin

Scripts to build with Cygwin are provided by svnpenn. Checkout his repository.

General notes

• There is a workaround for GCC Bug 66145 provided in io/catchiofailure.h.