<!-- .element style="height: 8em" --> Modern Development Environment For C/C++ ======================================== By David Zemon February 16, 2022 See blog posts [Part 1](https://objectpartners.com/2020/08/19/modern-development-environment-for-c-part-1/) and [Part 2](https://objectpartners.com/2021/06/16/modern-development-environment-for-c-part-2/) for related content

What is a "Development Environment"? ==================================== All of the tools used by a developer on her local machine during the development stage, including: * Editor * Build system * Compiler & debugger * Testing tools

What Makes it "Modern"? ======================= * Easy integration of tools & IDE * _Without_ tools tightly coupled to an IDE * Declarative dependency management * Unit testing framework & powerful mocking library * Code coverage reports * Static & dynamic code analysis * Powerful and intuitive debugger ACTIVELY MAINTAINED TOOLS COMMUNITY SUPPORT

How Do We Get There with C/C++? =============================== [](https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/) <!-- .element style="width: 6em; height: auto; position: absolute" --> [](https://conan.io/) <!-- .element style="width: 4em; height: auto; position: absolute; right: 1em" --> By combining two newcomers 1. **JetBrains CLion** 2. **JFrog Conan** With a suite of well-established staples CMake, GoogleTest, gcc/gdb/gcov,<br /> clang-tidy, clang-format, valgrind

[](https://cmake.org/) CMake is an open-source, cross-platform family of tools designed to build, test and package software. Want to [Learn CMake](https://davidzemon.github.io/LearnCMake/)?

What is CMake? ============== * Wildly popular * Makefile generator * Unit test runner * Software packaging orchestrator

Why CMake? ========== 1. Cross-platform 1. High-level 1. Support for more than just compiling * Unit testing * Packaging * IDE integration

CMake's Standout Features ========================= * Transitive dependencies<br />libA -> libB, libB -> libC ∴ libA -> libC * Library/package discovery * Componentized installation and packaging * Custom/customized compiler/compiler settings * Easy-to-read, color-coded messages And can be extended for most anything else you can imagine<br />(turing complete)

Just show an example! ===================== ```cmake project(CMakeDemo) # Build and install a library add_library(CMakeDemo-lib lib/CMakeDemo.cpp) target_include_directories(CMakeDemo-lib PUBLIC "$<BUILD_INTERFACE:${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/include>" $<INSTALL_INTERFACE:include>) install(TARGETS CMakeDemo-lib DESTINATION lib) install(DIRECTORY include DESTINATION include) # Build and install an executable consuming the above library add_executable(CMakeDemo bin/cli.cpp) target_link_libraries(CMakeDemo CMakeDemo-lib) install(TARGETS CMakeDemo DESTINATION bin) # Make this library consumable by other CMake projects install(EXPORT ${PROJECT_NAME}Config DESTINATION lib/cmake/${PROJECT_NAME} NAMESPACE CMakeDemo::) ```

Let's see it in action! ======================= Steps taken before screen recording: * Start Docker container with 'ubuntu:latest' image * Install packages: cmake, make, g++, gcc, git, tree, vim * Compile and install GoogleTest with default settings <video controls loop muted="muted"> <source src="images/CMakeDemo.mp4" type="video/mp4"> <p>Your browser does not support HTML5 video. <a href="https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/DavidZemon/modern-dev-env-for-c-cpp/main/images/CMakeDemo.mp4"> You may download the file here instead.</a> </p> </video>

[](https://conan.io/) The open source, decentralized and multi-platform package manager to create and share all your native binaries.

What was wrong with apt/yum/pacman? ===================================  <!-- .element style="width: 10em; float: right" --> * Not cross-platform * Limited to one version of a given<br /> package at a time * Standard usage requires root access * Limited "developer" features, such as<br /> installing dev-only dependencies

How does Conan work? ====================  <!-- .element style="width: auto; height: 15em; position: absolute" --> <div style="margin-left: 10em; padding-top: 2em"> Build packages with recipes and profiles Share packages to the central artifact repository and cache them locally  </div>

Conan Recipes & Profiles ======================== * "Recipes" describe * Build dependencies and runtime dependencies * Instructions for building and packaging * Metadata such as library names, include directories, etc * Metadata from dependencies' recipes provided to build system<br /> (lib paths, include dirs, etc) * "Profiles" describe an environment with * Classic build/host/target triplet * Environment variables * Build type (release/debug) compiler version, etc

Conan Artifact Storage ====================== * Remote artifact storage for pre-compiled binaries * JFrog hosts a big one, Conan Center, similar to `repo.maven.apache.org` * Artifactory Community Edition for C/C++ (free) includes Conan * Simplistic `conan_server` shipped with Conan's `pip` package * Artifacts must include the recipe & source, optionally include binary * Artifacts are cached in a central directory on the user's machine (like Maven) for offline development * Artifacts are uniquely identified to support unique instances for every permutation of a project (host, target, compiler, compiler version, build configuration, SCM revision, etc)

Just show an example! ===================== ```py class SpaghettiRecipe(ConanFile): name = 'spaghetti' version = '1.0.0-1' settings = 'os', 'compiler', 'build_type', 'arch' options = { 'shared': [True, False], 'fPIC': [True, False] } default_options = { 'shared': False, 'fPIC': True } generators = 'cmake_find_package' build_requires = 'stockpot/[^3.2.1]', 'gtest/cci.20211026' requires = 'plates/[~4.5.6]' scm = { 'type': 'git', 'url': 'auto', 'revision': 'auto' } def build(self): cmake = CMake(self); cmake.configure(); cmake.build(); cmake.test() def package(self): CMake(self).install() ```

Let's see it in action! ======================= Steps taken before screen recording: * Start Docker container with `ubuntu:latest` image * Install packages: python3-pip, cmake, make, g++, gcc, git, tree, vim * Install Conan via pip <video controls loop muted="muted"> <source src="images/ConanDemo.mp4" type="video/mp4"> <p>Your browser does not support HTML5 video. <a href="https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/DavidZemon/modern-dev-env-for-c-cpp/main/images/ConanDemo.mp4"> You may download the file here instead.</a> </p> </video>

[](https://google.com) A cross-platform IDE for C and C++

Built for Modern CMake ====================== Like IntelliJ IDEA w/ Maven, CLion parses CMake files directly * Recognize different include directories per targets * Recognize different preprocessor definitions per build type * Auto-create run configurations per target, including specialized GoogleTest, Catch2, Boost.Test, and Doctest * (W/ Conan plugin) Auto-run Conan during CMake configuration

Additional Integrations ======================= [](https://www.docker.com/) <!-- .element style="width: 4em; height: auto; position: absolute; right: 1em" --> * Multi-toolchain support, including toolchains in<br />**Docker**, **WSL**, and **remote servers** * `clang-tidy` static code analysis * `clang-format` formatter on "Save" * Same beautiful debugger with conditional<br />breakpoints, hex/binary for ints, etc * Valgrind output parsing; No more incomprehensible stacks * Analyze core dumps * Remote GDB/LLDB

Oohhh, SHINY! ============= <video controls loop muted="muted"> <source src="images/CLionDemo.mp4" type="video/mp4"> <p>Your browser does not support HTML5 video. <a href="https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/DavidZemon/modern-dev-env-for-c-cpp/main/images/CLionDemo.mp4"> You may download the file here instead.</a> </p> </video>

Remote Development

Now, with more easy!

Jumpstart ========= > Generate a C/C++ project using a modern development environment * Docker image for easy installation and use * Includes integration of all tools described in this presentation * Configuration options support selectable license file, choosing C/C++, whether or not to include tests, etc Getting started: https://github.com/DavidZemon/jumpstart `docker run --rm davidzemon/jumpstart`

Additional Integrations ======================= * CMake invokes `clang-tidy` during compilation * `clang-format` on git hook and CI execution * CMake executes tests via `valgrind` * Extra build target for generating code coverage reports * Extra build target for generating Doxygen documentation * Dynamically generated properties file for SonarQube integration [](https://www.sonarqube.org/) <!-- .element style="height: 6em; width: auto;" -->

Complete Tool List

Dependency management

Conan

Build system

CMake

Testing framework

Google Test

Mocking library

Google Mock

Code coverage

gcov

Static code analysis

clang-tidy

Code formatter

clang-format

Dynamic code analysis

valgrind

Editor

JetBrains CLion

Debugger

gdb

But NONE of it matters! ======================= [](https://rust-lang.org) <!-- .element style="display: inline; padding-right: 1em" --> [](https://crates.io/) <!-- .element style="display: inline; padding-left: 1em" --> Because you should just use **Rust** and **Cargo** instead [](https://mozilla.org) <!-- .element style="width: 15em; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto" -->