I am very new to Erlang programming language. Is there a standard build tool in Erlang?
I have googled out these, not sure which one I should use.
Erlang Make http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/make.html
Rebar
Erlang.mk
Rebar is gradually being replaced by rebar3, which provides more deterministic builds and conflict resolution, packages (integrating with hex.pm), and so on.
As one of the current rebar and rebar3 maintainers, I'd recommend rebar3.
Yes, we can use default make tool for build yours code (http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/make.html). But it is not so convenient.
Most projects use rebar. Because it is easy and convenient.
And yes, we can use Erlang.mk, it also provides the necessary functionality. It's big Makefile.
I recommend you start with rebar.
rebar3 is a tool to make Erlang projects easier to manage. A kind of build tools and package management for erlang. This is also very helpful when we start a project, create a project skeleton, do compilation and build projects, make packages release to production, download erlang packages, etc.
Related
I am writing a multiplatform (windows and Linux) application in c++ using boost asio. I have previous experience using gradle for automated Java dependency management and found the tools for c++ are not as good. Currently the best I've found is nuget for visual studio.
My question is, when there are no good tools for automated dependency management, what is the best practice for publishing a project on github? Should I supply pages of documentation on how to set up the build environment and where to download third party dependencies, or, should I supply everything required to compile the project?
Also please if possible provide good reasons for your answer. Thanks.
From my observation, supplying documents on how to set up the build environment is a general way.
It can make your project more portable. That is, users can select the dependencies they like to build. And you don't have to update your project due to the update of dependencies.
A very important thing you need to keep in mind is that you should consider how to make building issue easy. Make sure that your project is general enough to fit the dependencies. And the document should be clear and compact.
I'm a C++ beginner and I'm starting to develop my first cross-platform C++ project. I need to use platform-specific calls (Win32 and POSIX) so I need to compile frequently both in Windows and Linux.
Whit single-platform projects I'm using, until now, KDevelop in Linux and Visual Studio 2012 in Windows.
How can I use two different IDEs in two different Operating Systems with the same project?
Should I use a single, cross-platform, IDE?
Should I learn CMake (or similar) and configure it to work with both IDEs?
Could/Should I host my code in the web and sync automatically with offline projects?
Alternatives?
Thanks in advance to everyone.
EDIT:
Just for clarification, the project will be a simple server for a scholastic protocol. There will be a client asking for upload/retrieve some files to/from the server.
With scholastic I mean that, for example, I have to use pthreads/win32 threads instead of an higher level C++ threads library.
Maybe - really depends on what you feel most comfortable with. As the project is non-graphical, all the IDE gives you is editing of files and compilation. So you can build the project on one machine with the IDE there, and then move the sources to another machine for compiling there.
I personally would just have two makefiles, one for Linux and one for Widnows. Makes life fairly simple [you could have a "outer" makefile that picks the right one based on some clever method].
Yes, you should find a version control system that works for both Windows and Linux (git, mercurial, subversion, bazaar and several others). That way, not only do you have a central repository [you can use either of your machines as "server" for any of these], but it also allows you to keep track of your changes. Definitely worthwile doing!
There are hundreds of different alternatives. But the simpler you keep it, and the less complicated your tools are, the more time you get to spend on actually programming your project, rather than, for example, figure out why CMake isn't building the way you want it to.
Also, make sure that you separate out all your system-specific code to one file per architecture. That way, it's easy to port to another architecture later, and it makes MOST of your code compile on both systems.
Typically, it's easy to adjust the IDE-specific project/build files to added/moved/deleted source files. Therefore, using a cross-platform IDE isn't that important.
You can do that, I think that CMake can also create project files for some IDEs that can then be used to build the project.
Ahem, if you want to host it online or not is your choice. What you should definitely do is to use some kind of version control. A bug-tracking system is also helpful. If you want to open-source the code anyway, using one of the existing hosting facilities is a clear yes.
Not really.
One comment though: You will have much more trouble making the C++ code portable. Building on top of a toolkit like Qt is a tremendous help. If you want to stay closer to standard C++, at least consider using Boost for stuff like threads, smart pointers, filesystem access. Good luck!
My recent experience suggest to take a look at Qt. The IDE (QtCreator) it's very good, and available on all major platforms.
I've used for a fairly simple project, that uses fairly complex components, like OpenCV and ZBar. I develop on Linux, copy the source to Windows, and recompile.
I had some trouble to setup OpenCV on both platforms, so I can't say it's super easy, but it's working. Since you already know KDevelop, you should already know Qt.
I also put much value in recent trend that see Qt5 as the platform for Ubuntu on smartphones. I really hope to see this developing.
HTH
How can I use two different IDEs in two different Operating Systems with the same project?
Should I use a single, cross-platform, IDE?
No. I think this is a case of asking the wrong question. To make a cross-platform project, what matters is your build scripts and the system-neutral nature of your code. Sometimes it might help to have project files for your preferred IDE, but maintaining multiple project files for multiple IDEs will only make things more difficult and complex for you. Instead, you should focus on finding a build system that minimizes the amount of time you spend on project maintenance.
For that, CMake and PreMake seem to be two of the best tools to make that happen.
There are dozens of alternatives (like SCons, Cook, kbuild, Jam and Boost Jam, and many others), but since CMake and PreMake both generate project files and build scripts, they might be the best solutions.
Your mileage will vary.
Could/Should I host my code in the web and sync automatically with offline projects?
You should have robust source control that works everywhere you do. Git and Mercurial seem to work best if you use some kind of "cloud" hosting like Github or BitBucket, but they by no means require it. Depending on your work environment and team size, you may prefer Subversion or PerForce or something else, but that's up to you and your team.
it will help, you will quite likely need to debug on many platforms... Qt Creator, Netbeans and Eclipse come to mind.
Yes. cmake, or qmake for Qt maybe
Not technical question. Just use version control! github and gitorious are easy choices for open source project though.
Qt is a no-brainer choice for cross-platform C++ GUI app, and also decent choice for network app with no GUI.
A little background, we have a fairly large code base, which builds in to a set of libraries - which are then distributed for internal use in various binaries. At the moment, the build process for this is haphazard and everything is built off the trunk.
We would like to explore whether there is a build system which will allow us to manage releases and automatically pull in dependencies. Such a tool exists for java, Maven. I like it's package, repository and dependency mechanism, and I know that with either the maven-native or maven-nar plugin we could get this. However the problem is that we cannot fix the source trees to the "maven way" - and unfortunately (at least the maven-nar) plugins don't seem to like code that is not structured this way...
So my question is, is there a tool which satisfies the following for C++
build
package (for example libraries with all headers, something like the .nar)
upload package to a "repository"
automatically pull in the required dependencies from said repository, extract headers and include in build, extract libraries and link. The depedencies would be described in the "release" for that binary - so if we were to use CI server to build that "release", the build script has the necessary dependencies listed (like the pom.xml files).
I could roll my own by modifying either make+shell scripts or waf/scons with extra python modules for the packaging and dependency management - however I would have thought that this is a common problem and someone somewhere has a tool for this? Or does everyone roll their own? Or have I missed a significant feature of waf/scons or CMake?
EDIT: I should add, OS is preferred, and non-MS...
Most of the linux distributions, for example, contain dependency tracking for their packages. Of all the things that I've tried to cobble together myself to take on your problem, in the end they all are "not quite perfect". The best thing to do, IMHO, is to create a local yum/deb repository or something (continuing my linux example) and then pull stuff from there as needed.
Many of the source-packages also quickly tell you the minimum components that must be installed to do a self-build (as opposed to installing a binary pre-compiled package).
Unfortunately, these methods are that much easier, though it's better than trying to do it yourself. In the end, to be cross-platform supporting, you need one of these systems per OS as well. Fun!
I am not sure if I understand correctly what you want to du, but I will tell you what we use and hope it helps.
We use cmake for our build. It hat to be noted that cmake is quite powerful. Among other things, you can "make install" in custom directories to collect headers and binaries there to build your release. We combine this with some python scripting to build our releases. YMMV, but some things might just be too specific for a generic tool and a custom script may be the simpler solution.
Our build tool builds releases directly from a svn reposity (checkout, build, ...) which I can really recommend to avoid some local state polluting the release in some unforseen way. It also enforces reproducability.
It depends a lot on the platforms you're targeting. I can only really speak for Linux, but there it also depends on the distributions you're targeting, packages being a distribution-level concept. To make things a bit simpler, there are families of distributions using similar packaging mechanisms and package names, meaning that the same recipe for making a Debian package will probably make an Ubuntu package too.
I'd definitely say that if you're willing to target a subset of all known Linux distros using a manageable set of packaging mechanisms, you will benefit in the long run from not rolling your own and building packages the way the distribution creators intended. These systems allow you to specify run- and build-time dependencies, and automatic CI environments also exist (like OBS for rpm-based distros).
There are already some questions about dependency managers here, but it seems to me that they are mostly about build systems, while I am looking for something targeted purely at making dependency tracking and resolution simpler (and I'm not necessarily interested in learning a new build system).
So, typically we have a project and some common code with another project. This common code is organized as a library, so when I want to get the latest code version for a project, I should also go get all the libraries from the source control. To do this, I need a list of dependencies. Then, to build the project I can reuse this list too.
I've looked at Maven and Ivy, but I'm not sure if they would be appropriate for C++, as they look quite heavily java-targeted (even though there might be plugins for C++, I haven't found people recommending them).
I see it as a GUI tool producing some standardized dependency list which can then be parsed by different scripts etc. It would be nice if it could integrate with source control (tag, get a tagged version with dependencies etc), but that's optional.
Would you have any suggestions? Maybe I'm just missing something, and usually it's done some other way with no need for such a tool? Thanks.
You can use Maven in relationship with C++ in two ways. First you can use it for dependency management of components between each other. Second you can use Maven-nar-plugin for creating shared libraries and unit tests in relationship with boost library (my experience). In the end you can create RPM's (maven-rpm-plugin) out of it to have adequate installation medium. Furthermore i have created the installation for CI environment via Maven (RPM's for Hudson, Nexus installation in RPM's).
I'm not sure if you would see an version control system (VCS) as build tool but Mercurial and Git support sub-repositories. In your case a sub-repository would be your dependencies:
Join multiple subrepos into one and preserve history in Mercurial
Multiple git repo in one project
Use your VCS to archive the build results -- needed anyway for maintenance -- and refer to the libs and header files in your build environment.
If you are looking for a reference take a look at https://android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest.
What would be the best choice of build system for a more than one million line multi platform project, which produces drivers, libraries, command line tools, GUIs, and OS install packages for all the mainstream OSes, using both the GNU and Microsoft toolchains?
Our source code is mainly C, with Python, C# and GNU makefile, and a little C++ and bash. It resides mainly in one repository, but we push source code to various third parties all of whom have their source code code repositories. There is also some interest in keeping the build fast, which might involve splitting up the project.
Currently we use a mixture of GNU make, bash, python and Microsoft's DDKBUILD. The main problems are that we are maintaining a complex set of scripts on top of make and would prefer to use third party (preferably open source) tools, and that cygwin is not proving to be robust on Windows (e.g. fork isn't always possible), and that our current build system does not build or install the toolchain so is vulnerable to tool chain version changes.
I vote for CMake, as a meta-building tool that really rewrite KDE4 build system from scratch -- and make KDE4 now a cross-platform desktop that even running on WindowsCE!
CMake is the carrier porting KDE4 to any OS on earth -- by generating Makefile( or vcprojs in Windows case) for about 40 OSes with relative toolchains!
JetBrains TeamCity works very well in general, so should be worth having on the eval list.
ThoughtWorks Cruise is also in the same space. While its v1, it comes from a stable that's been around for a while.
There's nothing about Team Foundation Server that would make necessarily count it out for your situation, but out of the box it might be more MS-shop centric that the other two I've mentioned.
As a general comment, with the level of variety you have, you definitely want to trial whatever it is you want to use - just because something is supported as a tick on the box doesnt mean its going to suit what oyu're looking for.
Dickson,
Is your build mostly monolithic or do you want to build some libraries separately and assemble them into the larger application? If inter-project dependencies are a big deal, your choices become limited quickly. AnthillPro does it well, and I think TeamCity has some Ivy integration support. From what you're saying, it sounds like this is not an absolute need, but might be helpful in speeding the build. It's certainly a strategy that we've seen a number of teams execute effectively.
Since you're looking at cross-platform (I assume multiple machine) builds, most of the open source tools other than Hudson are ruled out.
A build server comparison matrix is hosted by our friends at Thoughtworks here: confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CC/CI+Feature+Matrix
Good luck.
You should have CMake on your list of alternatives to investigate. CMake is a meta-tool, i.e. it generates the input to the build-tool of your choice (GNU make, Visual Studio, etc.). I can recommend it strongly.
You may want to look at Cruise. It is built on Java so it will run on any platform that supports that. You can also have multiple build agents on different machines that can perform the different tasks on the different platforms. Thoughtworks is still building it out so some of the functionality is lacking, but it may be a a good option since you are looking for true cross-platform capabilities.
SCons is a cross-platform build system implemented in Python. We use it to build our code on three platforms. It can automatically detect your build tools but you can also put arbitrary Python code in your build script. It also lets you separate your environment setup from description of your project structure, a great feature for reuse of your buidl scripts in different environments. Besides building your project directly, it can also generate Visual Studio project files.