I'm learning C++, some of the Boost libraries and VS2019 Community Edition. I'm currently reading through the Boost website's online material and the book Learning Boost C++ Libraries, trying to follow along. I would like to update to 1.70.0 and figure out exactly why my code is building correctly. I know, I know...if it's working why question it? Well, the truth is I just don't understand why!
I wasn't aware of Nuget and vcpkg prior to downloading and installing Boost 1.68.0 manually (BTW, there seems to be way too many ways of installing the libraries and it's quite confusing). I have since deleted the original Boost installation directory and tried to install the Boost libraries through Nuget in VS2019. This didn't appear to be successful (although I suspect vcpkg (see below) has something to do with it). I was getting a single linker error (can't find the .lib file) which I eventually resolved (don't ask me how...it's a confusing story involving creating a new project and cutting/pasting my code. Now it works; go figure).
Currently, when I begin an #include directive () in my code I can see the path to the files which is buried under D:\...\vcpkg\installed\x86-windows\include\boost. I've never used vcpkg directly so I have no idea why it's there. The Property Pages for the project don't list the paths under C/C++ > Additional Include Directories or under Linker > Additional Library Directories so I haven't a clue from where the compiler and linker are getting the references. There appear to be no packages installed under the Nuget UI.
Ideally, I would like to start over with the Boost installation and use VS internal tools to do so. I will probably have several different VS solutions as I explore Boost and would prefer Boost to be available to all future projects. Is that possible?
Any advice?
One thing to keep in mind is that the "boost" package only installs the header only libraries, it doesn't install all the libraries that require a binary library.
To install the binary libraries, you need to install individual packages, for instance "boost_log-vc141" is the boost logging library.
First, install the boost package into your project using NuGet. You should see a packages.config added to your project that looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<packages>
<package id="boost" version="1.70.0.0" targetFramework="native" />
</packages>
Next, include the desired boost header file:
#include <boost\array.hpp>
You can confirm that the header is being loaded from the correct path by placing the caret after the hpp, pressing CTRL+SPACE, then hovering hovering over the item in the context list:
Related
So I've linked OpenCV already and that was pretty straightforward and there are many guides online how to do it.
But I don't know how to go about downloading Tesseract for usage in one's own applications. I want to get the API and use it in my code in conjunction with OpenCV. Can anyone guide me through what I need to download and what settings I'd need to tinker with to achieve this?
Install vcpkg ( MS packager to install windows based open source projects) and use powershell command like so .\vcpkg install tesseract:x64-windows-static. Dependency libraries like Leptonica will be auto installed for you. The tesseract can be auto integrated to your VS project using .\vcpkg integrate install.
I had a similar problem and in this thread I shared my experience on how I solved it. May be helpful for someone. I'll cope the text here:
I've been trying to link tesseract library to my c++ project in Visual Studio 2019 for a couple of days and I finally managed to do it.
Any thread that I found or even official tesseract documentation do not have full list of instructions on what to do.
I'll list what I have done, hopefully it will help someone. I don't pretend its the optimal way to do so.
There are basic tips in official tesseract documentation.
Go to "Windows" section.
I did install sw and cppan but I guess it wasn't necessary.
The main thing here is installing vcpkg.
It requiers Git so I installed it.
then:
> cd c:tools (I installed it in c:\tools, you may choose any dir)
> git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg
> .\vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
> .\vcpkg\vcpkg install tesseract:x64-windows-static (I used x64 version)
> .\vcpkg\vcpkg integrate install
At this point everything should work, they said. Headers should be included, libs should be linked. But none was working for me.
Change project configuration to Release x64 (or Release x86 if you installed x86 tesseract).
To include headers: Go to project properties -> C/C++ -> General. Set Additional Include Directories to C:\tools\vcpkg\installed\x64-windows-static\include (or whereever you installed vcpkg)
To link libraries : project properties -> Linker -> General. Set Additional Library Directories to C:\tools\vcpkg\installed\x64-windows-static\lib
Project properties -> C/C++ -> Code Generation. Set Runtime Library to Multi-threaded(/MT). Otherwise I got errors like "runtime mismatch static vs DLL"
Tesseract lib couldn't link to its dependcies, so I added all libs that I had installed to C:\tools\vcpkg\installed\x64-windows-static\lib.
Project properties -> Linker -> Input. I set Additional Dependencies to archive.lib;bz2.lib;charset.lib;gif.lib;iconv.lib;jpeg.lib;leptonica-1.80.0.lib;libcrypto.lib;libpng16.lib;libssl.lib;libwebpmux.lib;libxml2.lib;lz4.lib;lzma.lib;lzo2.lib;openjp2.lib;tesseract41.lib;tiff.lib;tiffxx.lib;turbojpeg.lib;webp.lib;webpdecoder.lib;webpdemux.lib;xxhash.lib;zlib.lib;zstd_static.lib;%(AdditionalDependencies)
And after that it finally compiled and launched.
But... api->Init returned -1. To work with tesseract you should have tessdata directory with .traineddata files for the languages you need.
Download tessdata. I got it from official docs.
BTW, tessdata_fast worked better than tessdata_best for my purposes :)
So I downloaded single "eng" file and saved it like C:\tools\TesseractData\tessdata\eng.traineddata.
Then I added environment variable TESSDATA_PREFIX with value C:\tools\TesseractData\tessdata. I also added C:\tools\TesseractData to Path variables (just in case)
And after all this it is finally working for me.
How can I install a nuget package system-wide on visual studio 2015?
I mean, yeah, you can install nuget packages per-project and per-solution... but, is it possible to install them system-wide so they'll be available for sources using vs2015 compiler?
Right now I'm coding some swig c++ modules to be used on python with cmake and having these libraries available system-wide so I can include them like any other system header would be quite convenient.
Just to clarify, the generated project by cmake will be ninja(using vs compiler)+ST (no package manager involved)... but still I'd like to be able of using the goodies provided by nuget to have my library set ready to be used by the swig modules
Nuget package management system does not have a "system-wide" install mode.
Downloaded packages are cached, so that you are not forced to re-download them each time for each project/solution referencing them.
You can also specify a path where to put the packages, but as far as I know for C++ projects this has some drawbacks, including the fact that project files are injected with *.props file paths relative to the solution, that causes Nuget system to be hardly usable from same projects included in different solutions at different path levels.
It seems that Microsoft is moving toward a different package manager for C++ native projects, you may want to look at VCPKG on Github.
I'm very new to C++ world, so please, sorry for such a dummy question. I googled a little, but wasn't able to find a proper answer.
My question is fairly simple - how should I use libraries in C++ world. For example in Java - there is maven and gradle for this task. In Python - I use pip. In javascript npm and bower do all the stuff. In C# you use nuget or just adding DLL lib to your project. But looks like in C++ things isn't such easy.
I found a tool, called conan but amount of libraries they have is pretty small and does not include any what I'm looking for.
So, for example - I want to use nlp lib meta but it seems like they don't provide any installer files. So I assume I need to get sources from Github. Should I compile them and then try to add the compiled files to my project or do I need to have a lib folder in my project, and put meta's sources in those folder and after operate with meta's sources as they are in my project?
My question isn't about how to install specific meta lib, but more from the source management point of view. If I use Visual Studio on Windows for example, but my colleague will be coding Clion under Linux. And I don't know the proper way of managing dependencies in C++ world.
C++ doesn't have anything like pip or npm/bower. I don't know if maven or gradle can be persuaded to handle C++ libraries.
In general, you are going to have to end up with
Header files in a directory somewhere
library files (either static libraries, or DLLs/shared objects). If the library is a header-only library like some of the boost libraries, then you won't need this.
You get hold of the library files, either by building them on your machine (typical for open source projects, and projects aimed at Linux platforms), or by downloading the pre-compiled binaries (typical for Windows libraries, particularly paid-for).
Hopefully, the instructions for building the library will be included on the library website. As noted in the comments, 'meta' seems to be quite good at that.
When you try to compile with the library, you may need a command line option (eg -I) to specify the directory containing the header files, and you may need a linker option (eg -l) to tell the linker to link against your library.
Cget will install any package that uses standard cmake, and works for linux and windows. It has shorten syntax for getting packages directly from github(such as cget install google/googletest).
In addition, dependencies can be automatically downloaded as well by listing them in a requirements.txt file.
There is also recipes for installing non-cmake packages and the repository here has over 300 libraries(and growing). So you can install curl with just cget install pfultz2/cget-recipes curl.
C++ sadly has no package manager for libraries. Some are out there and try to be one which are still small and scattered though (like conan).
In linux you have some "-dev" packages you can install but they are also not "all".
You most likely end up downloading them yourself. Next though is you have the problem of integrating those libraries. You have different build systems per operating system so you have to see how you build c++ files.
Like in windows with Visual studio you have to get a visual studio project or a nmake compatible makefile to build the libraries and then add them to your project. Same with linux makefiles.
There are several build frameworks who are higher level like cmake. The example you have in your post also works with CMake. So integrating that one into a cmake build environment would be easier but this only applies for other libraries also trying to use/integrate cmake build environments to it (e.g. boost / qt is doing this).
Yeah these are some thoughts to this. Sadly there won't be an easy/definitive answer to this because there is no real central c++ packet repository which is also integrated into a build system.
It appears to me that the Crascit/DownloadProject could be of help in your situation. It provides CMake plugins for downloading projects from a git repository by specifying tags, etc. Then you can use add_custom_target to run commands you need to have the project built.
There are a number of popular C++ released via nuget packages.
You can search on the gallery for them, usually using the native or c++ tags. Obviously you need a nuget manager for your OS, and I'm pretty sure that the C++ nuget packages rely on MSBuild for a lot of the grunt work, so you may have trouble getting a non-Visual Studio oriented setup to work nicely.
Also Gradle actually does have some support for native dependencies as well. I had a look at little while ago but the work on it was curtailed because the support for VS 2015 was lacking.
I recommend vcpkg for cross platform development. It has a number of IDE integrations. GitHub project is here.
I do cross platform development using tools like CMake, Visual Studio, WSL. vcpkg was incredibly helpful.
I started new project... in cureent time it's just "source package manager" you can provide some source code on github and then it will be just copy to you project (based on cmake + auto generating cmake files)
So links here:
https://github.com/wsjcpp/wsjcpp
I am quite new to VC++ and Boost.
My problem is that I want to use Boost 1.56.0 in my VC++ Visual Studio 2013 project (so I use vc120).
I have installed Boost via NuGet (https://www.nuget.org/packages/boost/). Everything seems to be okay, but when I try to build my project it says:
Fatal error LNK1104: Cannot open file "libboost_thread-vc120-mt-gd-1_56.lib".
Do you know where exactly the problem is and how I can fix it?
I thought installing a package using NuGet will do the whole job to get things working on its own.
I know that the linker can't find the lib file (actually there was no build process at all). But I don't know how I can fix this issue.
I think it is not a good idea to manually compile Boost with VC120 and add the lib folder to the additional paths of the linker. Why should I use NuGet then?
Any help is welcome - I am trying and searching the internet for so many hours now and I couldn't fix the problem.
Thank you,
Stefan
As mentioned before, Boost Nuget can't contain all possible compiled libraries for all possible configuration and compiler versions. However, there are separete precompiled Nuget packages and also source packages. Here is a list of all 1.56.0 Boost Nuget packages https://getboost.codeplex.com/releases/view/126256
In your case, I would suggest to use precompiled boost_thread-vc120.1.56.0. Not 1.57 yet!
If you are lazy, you can also use boost-vc120.1.56.0 which depends on all precompiled Boost libraries for Visual Studio 2013.
It seems that the latest version of NuGet for boost doesn't include every lib and dll files package (source).
You should install boost_thread altogether.
BlueGo is a tool which builds Boost using Visual Studio 2010/12/13. You just have to start the application, select your configuration and hit the Build button- everything else works automatically.
It can be downloaded here: https://bitbucket.org/Vertexwahn/bluego
Since the NuGet packet of Boost does not contain the lib files anymore, because the package is getting to big, I have decided to build Boost by my own.
I followed this instructions: Build Boost for Visual Studio - also read the second post!
I saw it too late but maybe it is helpful for somebody else:
There are pre-build Boost installer!
Here you can download an installer, which will install Boost (of specific version) for 32/64 bit (depending on which file you choose). There are also already different versions (vc100, vc110, vc120) available.
The problem when you use NuGet is, that you have
Install the Boost package (to get the source files)
Install the lib files (see the link Marco A. provided)
This can be very cumbersome since not all libraries of Boost are available. E.g. the lib files of ASIO were missing. So if you need them you have to compile it again by your own. So you mess up your project with NuGet packages and self-compiled boost libs. If NuGet provides everything you need I would use the NuGet way.
Finally, as I said I need the ASIO lib and therefore I have finally compiled Boost by my own. It seemed so easy to just use a NuGet Package.
Thank you all for your help.
I've been working on various open-source projects, which involve the following C++ libraries (& others):
MuPDF
Boost
FreeType
GTKmm
hummus PDF libraries
LibTiff
LibXML2
Wt xpdf
xpdf
Poppler
ZLib
It often takes a long time to configure these libraries, when setting them up on a clean machine. Is there a way to automate the grabbing of all dependencies on a windows machine?
The closest I've found is CMake, which checks to make sure you have the dependencies installed/extracted before generating your project files. But I haven't found anything for Windows which can parse the list of dependencies and then download+install the required versions.
Please recommend a package manager for Windows with up-to-date C++ libraries.
Vcpkg, a Microsoft open source project, helps you get C and C++ libraries on Windows.
Take a look at the Hunter package manager when you already use CMake to setup your project. It automatically downloads and builds your dependencies whith only a few lines of extra cmake code. Hunter is based on cmake export and import targets.
For example if you want to use the GoogleTest library in your cmake based project you would add the following lines to your root CMakeLists.txt
# file root CMakeLists.txt
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0)
# To get hunter you need to download and include a single cmake file
# see documentation for correct name
include("../gate.cmake")
project(download-gtest)
# set the location of all your hunter-packages
set( HUNTER_ROOT_DIR C:/CppLibraries/HunterLibraries )
# This call automaticall downloads and compiles gtest the first time
# cmake is executed. The library is then cached in the HUNTER_ROOT_DIR
hunter_add_package(GTest)
# Now the GTest library can be found and linked to by your own project
find_package(GTest CONFIG REQUIRED)
add_executable(foo foo.cpp)
target_link_libraries(foo GTest::main)
Not all the libraries you list are available as "hunter-packages" but the project is open source so you can create hunter-packages for your dependencies and commit them to the project. Here is a list of libraries that are already available as hunter packages.
This will not solve all your problems out of the box because you have to create hunter-packages for your dependencies. But the existing framework already does a lot of the work and it is better to use that instead of having a half-assed selfmade solution.
Biicode is a new dependency manager for C++. It also has a few libraries that you listed. Biicode automatically scans your source files for dependencies, downloads and builds them. See here for a very cool example that includes Freeglut.
What I've found:
Closest thing to what I'm looking for:
NuGET
Unfortunately it doesn't have any of the libraries I require in its repository.
So I ended getting most of the libraries from the KDE4windows project and custom building the rest.
Npackd is a package manager for Windows. There is a default repository for C++ libraries and also a third party repository for Visual Studio 2010 64 bit libraries. Boost and zlib are already in the default repository. If you decide to use Npackd, you could file an issue if you need other libraries.
Windows does not have a package manager. Go to the libraries' website and download the Windows builds if they provide any.
There are some alternatives, but not without drawbacks:
Cygwin: provides a nice package manager, but all binaries are built for Cygwin, which means they run slower than their native equivalent, any apps using them will link to the Cygwin DLL, and you're stuck with that license. Also the use of the native Win32 API is sometimes troublesome due to incompatibility with the POSIX emulation offered. Only for GCC.
MinGW-get: is a package manager for the MinGW.org compiler. These are native Win32 binaries, but only for use with MinGW's GCC.
There is no package manager or slightly equivalent thing for anything Visual Studio or MinGW-w64 related.
There is no package management on Windows. On Windows developers typically use full-blown everything-and-the-kitchen-sink development environments and produce monolithic applications themselves, shipped with all dependencies.