cast

A simple and lightweight C++ build system with minimal user configuration.

Features

Minimal user configuration
Built-in unit testing support
Support for incremental and partial project builds
Integrates with Conan for handling external dependencies
Support for cross compilation

usage

Just run cast from the top level of your project!

$ cast

Simply clean up using:

$ cast clean

Run unit tests using:

$ cast check

project structure

With Cast, every directory under your src folder is automatically compiled based on the cast.cfg. If no config exists, the default behavior is to compile a driver. Cast supports compiling executables and libraries (static and dynamic). Folders named test are targeted for unit tests.

Folder names are used for naming the libraries and executables by default (libraries prefixed with lib).

Include a conanfile.txt file at the top level of your directory and cast will handle installing and linking against the dependencies for you. Note: this requires the CastGenerator package to be available.

example projects

See example projects here

cast.cfg

A simple library configuration can contain the following:

target:so
cflag:-fPIC 
ldflag:-ldl

target:exe
name:hello_world

If your project contains subdirectories that are required to be built in a particular order, use the subdir config item. If a directory exists that isn't referenced in a config, Cast will enter it an compile it anyway.

subdir:myLib
subdir:myExe

config items

config item	possible values	notes
target	"exe", "so", "a"
name	string	file name of the resulting target. libraries are prefixed with `lib` and include the extension
subdir	relative_path	add a subdir to the project
cflag	string	append to the list of cflags
ldflag	string	append to the list of ldflags

integrating cross compilers

To have cast use a cross compiler installed on your machine, add a cross tool config file into /usr/local/share/cast/crosstools, with the cross tool's name plus .cfg as the file's extension. The following items shall be defined in the cross tool config (following the same format for cast.cfg files).

config item	description
ar	archive tool
gxx	compiler
strip	strip tool

default system dependencies

If there are specific libraries that are available on the system (ex. pthread) that you'd like to use in your project directly, you need to make Cast aware of them. This can be done by adding dependency config files to the default Cast dependency directory: /usr/local/share/cast/deps/.

For example, to make cast aware that a source file that includes pthread.h needs to link with -lpthread, add a file named pthread.cfg to the default Cast dependency directory with the following contents

header:pthread.h
lib:-lpthread

*If the dependency depends on another dependency, add dep: entry for each dependency. For example, if there is a system library named libC that depends on libA and libB we would create 3 dependency config files (named libA.cfg, libB.cfg and libC.cfg), of which the libC.cfg file would contain the following:

header:libC.h
lib:-llibC
dep:libA
dep:libB

build cast

Requires

c++14 compiler
Catch2 to be installed (for running cast's unit tests)

To build cast simply run:

$ cd src
$ make