How to use libcommute in your project

There are two ways to use libcommute, depending on what build system your C++ project is based on. Either way, you would need a compiler that supports at least C++11 and – optionally – C++17, if you are interested in using the dynamic index sequence feature.

It is recommended to include <libcommute/libcommute.hpp>, which pulls in all libcommute’s headers. The entire library is under 5000 lines of code and compilation times should normally not be a concern.

Makefiles/no build system

Assume that <libcommute> is either a directory with unpacked libcommute sources or the installation directory. Just one -I flag on compiler’s command line is sufficient to make libcommute’s header files visible to your code.

g++ -O3 -I<libcommute>/include -o myprog myprog.cpp

(similar for clang++ and other compilers).

pkg-config

libcommute installs a pkg-config configuration file libcommute.pc under <libcommute_prefix>/share/pkgconfig. One can run

pkg-config --cflags libcommute

get the correct -I flag needed for compilation. This method requires <libcommute_prefix>/share/pkgconfig being part of pkg-config’s lookup path (modification of the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable may be needed).

CMake

Here is a minimal example of a root CMakeLists.txt script for your project.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.8.0 FATAL_ERROR)

project(myproject LANGUAGES CXX)

# Change the C++ standard to '17' if you plan to use
# the dynamic index sequence feature
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)

# libcommute_ROOT is the installation prefix of libcommute
set(libcommute_DIR ${libcommute_ROOT}/lib/cmake)

# Import libcommute target
find_package(libcommute 0.7.2 CONFIG REQUIRED)

# Build an executable called 'myprog'
add_executable(myprog myprog.cpp)
target_link_libraries(myprog PRIVATE libcommute::libcommute)

Note

Starting from version 0.7.2, libcommute exports the namespaced CMake target libcommute::libcommute instead of just libcommute.