title	order
Intro and getting started	0

Introduction

Tipi solves three of the most common problems C++ developper face day to day: dependency management, long build times and environments:

speed up your workflow with powerful multiplatform cloud environments
fetch dependencies straight from git repositories, no need to wait for package definitions
shipped with a useful set of tools on three platforms

Getting started

create your account on tipi.build
install tipi :
- Tipi Visual Studio Code extension: Add to Visual Studio Code
- Command line util:

# Linux & MacOS:
/bin/bash -c \
 "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tipi-build/cli/master/install/install_for_macos_linux.sh)"

# Windows 10 / 11 in Powershell
[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = "Tls, Tls11, Tls12, Ssl3"
. { `
  iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tipi-build/cli/master/install/install_for_windows.ps1 `
} | iex

# P.S.: we highly recommend you give a the new Windows Terminal app a try. It truly augments your 
# console experience on Windows!

run tipi connect and link your installation to your tipi.build account so you can use your tipi subscription
create an empty folder for the example project on your disk
create an example.cpp and write a simple hello world:

#include <iostream>

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
  std::cout << "tipi is cool ! " << std::endl;
  return 0;
}

Note on platforms and environments:

You can replace occurences of linux-cxx17 in the instructions below with windows or macos-cxx17 when using your subscription or the environment matching your machine's platform

On Linux: linux-cxx17 or linux-cxx20

On MacOS: macos-cxx17 or macos-cxx20

On Windows: windows or windows-cxx17 or windows-cxx20 or vs-16-2019-cxx17 (if you have Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019 installed)

When using your tipi subscription to build or run, a cloud node of the corresponding platform is deployed in the tipi cloud.

build the example using either:
- your tipi subscription: tipi build . -t linux-cxx17
- your local machine: tipi . -t linux-cxx17
run the resulting binary using:
- your tipi subscription: tipi .run /build/linux-cxx17/bin/example -t linux-cxx17
- your local machine: tipi run /build/linux-cxx17/bin/example ¹
Add a dependency from Github: we're going to add a json manipulation library from: github.com/nlohmann/json
- create a file .tipi/deps with content

{
	"nlohmann/json" : { "@" : "v3.10.4" }
}

Note: we are pinning the version of the dependency to the tagger release v3.10.4 (list can be found under nlohmann/json/releases ). At time of building tipi will pull the release from the github repository and build it. If you want to live on the edge, you can remove the @ pin or write a branch name like master in there.

Edit your example.cpp:

#include <iostream>
#include <nlohmann/json.hpp> // tipi.build will find it online

int main(int argc, char** argv) {

  std::cout << "Wonderful JSON formatter with tipi is cool ! " << std::endl;

  auto json = nlohmann::json::parse(argv[1]);
  std::cout << json.dump(2) << std::endl;
  return 0;
}

Compile and run (see #6 and #7 above):

$> tipi run ./build/linux-cxx17/bin/example '[4,52,25]'
Wonderful JSON formatter with tipi is cool ! 
[
  4,
  52,
  25
]

Key principles and goals

Finally: the C++ flow

Code scanning & conventions over build configuration
0 setup - just coding
- select one environment from our supported list or specify your own
- tipi downloads & installs the compiler and libraries in an isolated distro folder automatically

Environments on demand

We automatically provision repeatable build environments on powerful cloud build machines when you need them. Learn more about how tipi environments are specified: environment

Every project is a library

In a software project there are 2 kinds of entrypoints:

Developer entrypoints for code reuse
End-user entrypoints for application use

By default tipi automatically builds both a library and an application (if something like a main() is found) from your sources to ease reuse.

Don't pay for what you don't use

This is a core C++ design philosophy, and sadly the world of packages manager obliges you to take more than you need.

By definition a package does pack of alot of things, and the final application won't need all of them.

tipi allows you to do a fine-granular selection of your dependencies and pulls only the bits that are really required in your final application.

Opinionated defaults (but you choose)

While tipi clearly is set out to enable you to build anything without complex scripts, we don't hold you back to customize parts (or all of) the build with CMakeLists.txt.tpl or CMakeLists.txt files associated with use-cmake.tipi files.

by using tipi run to launch the binary you make sure your OS as has all the required libraries in its search path, for ex. the libstdc++6 on windows. ↩

sandordargo/docs