The project leverages CMake, a cross-platform build management tool. Most popular IDEs, like CLion, Xcode, and Visual Studio, understand and support CMake based projects.
The C++ project structure I have chosen to follow is detailed on Project Heuristics.
The C++ convention for CMake builds is what is called an "out of source" build, meaning you give room for your build to generate artifacts that don't clutter your source directories.
The .gitignore has been tuned for out of source builds to happen in the ./build/ dir.
Consider using a pattern like the one below for your builds should you want to build the project in a non-IDE, command line way.
We are coding to the lowest common denominator of the contributors. This is currently:
- Visual Studio (15) 2017 (which supports up to CMake 3.12)
- C++ 14
- CMake 3.11
There are lots of nice features added in later versions of CMake (3.14+) and C++ (17+) that we will work to progress towards.
*nix environments
mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ..
makewindows ms visual studio environments
\path\to\VsDevCmd.bat
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
devenv bmai.sln /buildUPDATE: I have learned about a more modern approach to using CMake. There are 2 patterns that are becoming common. However some of these commands may only work on later versions of cmake.
For command line only builds
echo configuring, building, testing Debug
cmake -S . -B build/Debug -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
cmake --build build/Debug
ctest --test-dir build/Debug
echo configuring, building, testing Release
cmake -S . -B build/Release -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build/Release
ctest --test-dir build/Releaseand for a multi-config / IDE based approach
echo configuring for IDE
cmake -S . -B build -G Xcode
# OR
cmake -S . -B build -G 'Visual Studio 17 2022'
echo or build from command line
cmake --build build --config Debug
ctest --test-dir build
echo for a subsequent Release build you will need to rebuild the build/ dir
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build --config Release
ctest --test-dir build