cmake-template

This is a cmake project template that makes it easy to quickly start working on a C++23 project on Unix platforms.

Getting started

Easiest is with nix. Install it, invoke nix-shell and in that shell run ./setup.sh.

Building Release targets:

mkdir build_rel
cd build_rel
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ../

CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE can be Debug(default)/Release.

To make this your own, replace all occurences of TEMPLATE with your project's name.

What does it do?

• Statically links against minimal version of Boost with the most useful libraries. Add new ones in build_boost.sh and link against them in cmake/libboost.cmake.
• Statically links against Google Benchmark and Google Test.
• (optional) Statically links against fmt.
• Sets up the Simple Binary Encoding generator to generate C++ headers from a given schema. The headers can be generated with make sbe in the build dir. They'll be placed under sbe/include/sbe. The schema to generate code from can be changed on the cmdline: cmake -DSBE_SCHEMA=/path/to/my/schema.xml ../.
• Uses clang++ and C++23 for everything. It works out of the box on Linux and BSD systems. It is also possible to build the dependencies and project itself with g++. Just set CXX and CC accordingly.
• Provides an easy way to setup tests and benchmarks:
  • If you want to write a test for file.cpp, then create file.test.cpp, write your tests and then run them from ./build/src/test. All project tests are run by ./build/src/test that is built from src/main.test.cpp.
  • If you want to write a benchmark for file.cpp, then create file.bm.cpp, link_benchmark against it and then you can run it after building the project. All benchmarks have a separate binary i.e. there is a target built for each *.bm.cpp file. See lib/CMakeLists.txt for an example.
• Supports both Release and Debug targets and ensures that the statically linked libraries are built in the same way. That means we are actually building two versions of each library: libname-release.a and libname-debug.a.
• Adheres to most of Google's C++ Style Guide. See .clang-format.
• Allows you to build and install libraries from a custom directory. This is done through the LIB_INSTALL_PREFIX and LIB_BUILD_PREFIX environment variables. Check build_boost.sh and cmake/libboost.cmake for examples. If the LIB_INSTALL_*_PREFIX and LIB_BUILD_*_PREFIX are not set, libraries are built in /tmp and installed in /usr/local.

Misc

• linking with mold: -DCMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS="-fuse-ld=mold" -DCMAKE_SHARED_LINKER_FLAGS="-fuse-ld=mold"
• checking toolchain: readelf -p .comment src/test