CMake and Conan based build environment

Prerequisites

Building boxes requires two tools to be installed:

Conan, a package manager for C/C++, is used to resolve required library and tool dependencies
- libunistring
- pcre2
- ncurses (official Conan 2 version should be available soon, see below)
- flex (library and tool)
- bison (tool)
- cmocka (for testing)
CMake is used for building.
Make sure that a C compiler and the tools for the underlying build environment (e.g., GNU Make or Ninja) are installed.

If Conan is used for the first time, start with the creation of a default profile:

conan profile detect

Building boxes

It is recommended to use the generated presets for building. For a debug build, follow these steps:

export BUILD_TYPE="Debug"
export BUILD_PRESET="conan-debug"

conan install . --output-folder=./build/${BUILD_TYPE} \
    --settings build_type=${BUILD_TYPE} \
    --build missing

cmake -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON --preset ${BUILD_PRESET}
cmake --build --preset ${BUILD_PRESET}

ctest --verbose --preset ${BUILD_PRESET}

Release build is similar:

export BUILD_TYPE="Release"
export BUILD_PRESET="conan-release"

conan install . --output-folder=./build/${BUILD_TYPE} \
    --settings build_type=${BUILD_TYPE} \
    --build missing

cmake -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON --preset ${BUILD_PRESET}
cmake --build --preset ${BUILD_PRESET}

ctest --verbose --preset ${BUILD_PRESET}

Of course the "classic" way works, too:

export BUILD_TYPE="Debug"

conan install . --output-folder=./build/${BUILD_TYPE} \
    --settings build_type=${BUILD_TYPE} \
    --build missing

cmake -S ./ -B ./build/${BUILD_TYPE} \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=${BUILD_TYPE} \
    -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON \
    -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=conan_toolchain.cmake

cmake --build ./build/${BUILD_TYPE} \
    --config ${BUILD_TYPE}

ctest --test-dir ./build/${BUILD_TYPE} --verbose

Installing boxes

First start with providing the Conan packages like described in the building boxes section. Then you can do the following to install the boxes:

...
export INSTALL_DIR="./dist"
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${INSTALL_DIR} --preset ${BUILD_PRESET}
cmake --build --preset ${BUILD_PRESET} --target install

${INSTALL_DIR}/bin/boxes --help

Packaging boxes

The installation process is used for packaging. So the same prerequisites as for installing boxes have to be fulfilled. To create boxes packages, do the following:

...
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${INSTALL_DIR} --preset ${BUILD_PRESET}
cmake --build --preset ${BUILD_PRESET} --target package

Notes

ncurses

The Conan ncurses is in the last steps of being migrated from version 1 to version 2 (you can track the status). Unfortunately this means, that it cannot be used right out-of-the-box, and needs to be created into the local Conan cache manually first. Fortunately, it is rather easy to do this by following these steps:

# Create a directory where the recipes files are stored
mkdir -p ncurses
pushd ncurses

# Download the required files
curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/valgur/conan-center-index/migrate/ncurses/recipes/ncurses/all/conandata.yml
curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/valgur/conan-center-index/migrate/ncurses/recipes/ncurses/all/conanfile.py
mkdir -p cmake
pushd cmake
curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/valgur/conan-center-index/migrate/ncurses/recipes/ncurses/all/cmake/conan-official-ncurses-targets.cmake
popd

# Build the package
conan create . --version 6.4 --settings build_type=Debug --build missing
#conan create . --version 6.4 --settings build_type=Release --build missing

popd

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