SystemAbstractions

This is library contains classes which are either common utilities or wrap common operating system services whose interfaces vary from one operating system to another.

Usage

The SystemAbstractions::Clipboard class is an abstraction of the "clipboard" feature available in most operating systems.

The SystemAbstractions::DiagnosticsContext class is a utility meant to be used with SystemAbstractions::DiagnosticsSender. It enhances diagnostic messages generated during the scope of the context object, to help identify the context.

The SystemAbstractions::DiagnosticsSender class is a utility used to format and publish diagnostic messages in a large integrated system. Delegate functions may subscribe to the sender in order to receive copies of any published messages.

The SystemAbstractions::DiagnosticsStreamReporter function is a utility meant to be used with SystemAbstractions::DiagnosticsSender. It generates a delegate function which, when subscribed to a sender, prints all diagnostic messages to a pair of standard C FILE streams. The stream printed to depends on the severity/importance level of the message. A common use of this function is to print to the predefined standard C streams stdout and stderr, representing the standard output and standard error streams, respectively.

The SystemAbstractions::DirectoryMonitor class is an abstraction of operating system facilities allowing a program to subscribe to notifications sent when files in a given directory are created, modified, or deleted.

The SystemAbstractions::DynamicLibrary class is an abstraction of operating system facilities used to load, access, and unload run-time loadable modules, also known as dynamic-link libraries.

The SystemAbstractions::File class is both an implementation of the SystemAbstractions::IFile interface as well as a collection of cross-platform utility functions for performing common operations with directories and files.

The SystemAbstractions::IFile class is an abstract interface to an object which can be used as a "file", whether it's an actual file in the traditional sense of being in a file system, or it's merely a "file-like" object, having common file behaviors but not actually existing in any real file system.

The SystemAbstractions::IFileCollection class is an abstract interface to a collection of files, whether they are in an actual file system (as in an actual file system directory) or are held in some other implementation of a file collection, such as the contents of an archive or compressed file collection (e.g. ZIP file).

The SystemAbstractions::NetworkConnection class is an abstraction of a connection-oriented "socket" or "socket-like" object representing a connection between the program and some remote "peer", whether it be another program running on the same machine, a program running on a different machine on the same network, a remote server, or a cloud-based service.

The SystemAbstractions::NetworkEndpoint class is an abstraction of a connection-oriented or datagram-oriented "socket" or "socket-like" object representing a service provided by the program that is accessible by other programs and machines on the same network or a remote network.

The SystemAbstractions::StringFile class is an implementation of the SystemAbstractions::IFile interface in terms of a string in memory.

The SystemAbstractions::Subprocess class is a cross-platform utility for starting a child process and forming a parent-child connection (typically implemented as a pipe or socket in shared memory) in order for the parent process to monitor the child process for when it exits normally or crashes.

The SystemAbstractions::TargetInfo module contains functions which obtain basic information about the program and the machine hosting it, such as the processor architecture of the host machine and whether or not the program was built for debugging.

The SystemAbstractions::Time class is an abstraction of the time measurement facilities of the operating system, including both the system time (also called "the wall clock") and the high-precision counter typically provided by the processor.

Supported platforms / recommended toolchains

This is a portable C++11 library which depends only on the C++11 compiler and standard library, so it should be supported on almost any platform. The following are recommended toolchains for popular platforms.

Windows -- Visual Studio (Microsoft Visual C++)
Linux -- clang or gcc
MacOS -- Xcode (clang)

Building

This library is not intended to stand alone. It is intended to be included in a larger solution which uses CMake to generate the build system and build applications which will link with the library.

There are two distinct steps in the build process:

Generation of the build system, using CMake
Compiling, linking, etc., using CMake-compatible toolchain

Prerequisites

CMake version 3.8 or newer
C++11 toolchain compatible with CMake for your development platform (e.g. Visual Studio on Windows)
StringExtensions - a library containing C++ string-oriented libraries, many of which ought to be in the standard library, but aren't.

Build system generation

Generate the build system using CMake from the solution root. For example:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017" -A "x64" ..

Compiling, linking, et cetera

Either use CMake or your toolchain's IDE to build. For CMake:

cd build
cmake --build . --config Release