How to compile multiple files in ROOT - c++

I wrote a C++ program (with a main.cpp, and various header and implementation files) that compiles fine under g++. Now I am trying to compile it in Cern's ROOT library, but I do not know how to, since the only way I know how to compile files in ROOT is by using .L main.cpp.
How can I include multiple files in ROOT?

The most reliable way to use ROOT (at least historically and currently) is to ignore the interpreter other than for the simplest explorations and explicitly compile your C++ programs against the ROOT libraries. For example, use
g++ MySource.cc `root-config --libs --cflags` -o foo
to compile an executable "foo" from a single source file. For more info on that helper script run "root-config --help".
Multi-file programs/libraries are nothing special provided that you supply the required args to point at the ROOT libraries and headers (and that the libs are available in LD_LIBRARY_PATH at runtime.) Standard C++ guides will explain that step if needed. You can safely put this into a makefile, too.
For my money this is both easier and more reliable than using the .L etc. commands in the CINT interpreter. Last time I tried, ACLiC was actually compiling against a temporary (and mangled) version of the specified source file, so any error messages from the compiler were pretty much useless!

I use CMake to compile my ROOT-based projects.
If you have a project directory proj/ and it contains src/ and bin/, you'll need 3 CMakeList.txt files, one in each directory.
A simple example CMakeList.txt in the main project directory:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.6)
project (SOME_PROJ_NAME)
add_subdirectory(src)
add_subdirectory(bin)
src/ directory is where you keep your .h and .cxx proj. library files. Example CMakeList.txt file:
# get all the *.cxx filenames, to compile them into a lib
file(GLOB SOME_PROJ_LIB_SRCS "${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/src/*.cxx")
# include ROOT library and include files
include_directories(/path/to/root/dir/include/dir)
link_directories(/path/to/root/dir/lib/dir)
# and compile src into a library
add_library(Proj_lib_name ${SOME_PROJ_LIB_SRCS})
# here, list the ROOT libraries you require
target_link_libraries(Proj_lib_name dl Core Cint RIO Net Hist Graf Graf3d Gpad Tree Rint Postscript Matrix Physics MathCore Thread Gui pthread m)
bin/ directory is where you keep your app .cxx files and it has a CMakeList.txt file:
include_directories(${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/src)
link_directories(${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/src)
include_directories(/path/to/root/dir/include/dir)
link_directories(/path/to/root/dir/lib/dir)
add_executable(example_app.exe example_app.cxx)
target_link_libraries(example_app.exe Proj_lib_name dl Core Cint RIO Net Hist Graf Graf3d Gpad Tree Rint Postscript Matrix Physics MathCore Thread Gui pthread m)
Finally, to compile ROOT-based code with CMake, out of source, you create a "build" dir in your top level project dir, so that your dir structure looks like this:
proj/
bin/
build/
src/
Then
cd build
cmake ..
Your binaries will be located in build/bin/ directory
Hope this helps.

It appears that I would simply .L <filename> for each file I want, since .L tells ROOT to "load the contents of file in memory." Though now I am not too sure which order to load the files in, as they are giving me errors.

Related

Project Linking and Compiling files

I want to start building a project and I have the following folder structure:
lib
|---class1.cpp
|---class1.hpp
src
|---main.cpp
I have the MinGW compiler and I don't know how to compile all .cpp files. I know the command g++ *.cpp -o main for compiling all the files, but works only for files in the same folder.
Should I move all my files to the src folder? Should I change the project structure?
Also, I'm really doubtful if I should use CMake or not.
FINAL:
I decided to go with CMake which made my life easier.
For a barebones project, your structure is fine. Just add the following CMakeLists.txt file to the root of your directory:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5)
# Given your project a descriptive name
project(cool_project)
# CHoose whatever standard you want here... 11, 14, 17, ...
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 14)
# The first entry is the name of the target (a.k.a. the executable that will be built)
# every entry after that should be the path to the cpp files that need to be built
add_executable(cool_exe src/main.cpp lib/class1.cpp)
# Tell the compiler where the header files are
target_link_libraries(cool_exe PRIVATE lib)
Your directory should now look like
CMakeLists.txt
lib
|---class1.cpp
|---class1.hpp
src
|---main.cpp
Then to build the project, you will typically
Make a folder where you build everything (often called build, but it's up to you). Now the directory looks like
CMakeLists.txt
lib
|---class1.cpp
|---class1.hpp
src
|---main.cpp
build
Go into the build folder and on the command like, configure your project with the command cmake .. (just to reiterate... this needs to be done from inside the build folder).
Build your project with the make command (again from inside the build folder).
After that, you should have an executable called cool_exe in the build folder.

Cmake project with multiple executables

I'm having trouble organizing my project using CMake with multiple executables. I have the following structure:
CmakeLists.txt
main.cpp
somelib.cpp
somelib.h
dir1
main.cpp
file1.h
file1.cpp
...
dir2
main.cpp
lib1.h
lib2.cpp
...
In general, I want to be able to choose the executable in Clion and run any project independently including the outer one which depends on two other projects. In the outer main.cpp I include the headers from dir1 and dir2. The dir1, dir2 projects itself depend on different libraries like Boost, Eigen, Qt etc. What is the best way to make this structure work? I'm new to Cmake and multiple tries using add_subdirectory haven't brought me closer to a solution. I made it work only in case when I have outer CmakeLists.txt and include all libraries there while using dir1, dir2 just as folders without any CmakeLists.txt inside. I'd appreciate any help.
From a plain CMake perspective -- so I have no idea how this interacts with CLion, but you indicate in comments that writing-the-CMakeLists.txt is the important bits -- one way to do it is this:
have a top-level CMakeLists.txt which sets up CMake parameters, C++ standards, compiler flags, options, etc.
after all the setup, add_subdirectory(dir1/) and add_subdirectory(dir2/)
after that, whatever you need for the top-level target, such as add_executable(mytoplevelprogram main.cpp somelib.cpp). If the build of mytoplevelprogram needs headers from the libraries, use suitable target_include_directories(mytoplevelprogram ...) and/or link to artifacts created in the subdirectories
in each of the subdirectories dir1 and dir2, write a CMakeLists.txt that finds the dependencies and builds the executable for that subdirectory, with suitable add_executable() commands.
There's generally no reason to put more than one project() command in your source tree.

Collect all header files when compiling static library

I am using Cmake to compile a static version of the library from source.
The source code has a structure that looks like this:
src/
module1/
x.cpp
x.h
...
module2/
y.cpp
y.h
...
and so on...
Compiling a static version of the library is not difficult. However for distribution purposes, I just want to distribute the the headers (x.h, y.h, ...) and static libraries (module1.a, module2.a, ...).
Is there some command in GCC or CMAKE to automatically collect all of the headers and put them into a separate folder?
I am aware that I could manually separate the source and headers, or I could simply distribute all of the code (source and headers), but that is wasteful and undesireable for my particular use case. Alternatively, I could write a pretty simple Python script to do it, but it seems to me that this is probably a pretty common scenario. So I would guess that there is something in Gcc or Cmake to do it.
Note: I am not in charge of maintaining the codebase, so I have no say in how the project is structured. If I was, I could have separated the code into src and include folders.
The best thing to do is have cmake glob and install all your artifacts.
# append to your existing CMakeLists.txt
install(TARGETS module1 module2 #adjust to use your names
ARCHIVE DESTINATION lib)
file(GLOB_RECURSE header_list "*.h") #adjust if necessary
install(FILES ${header_list}
DESTINATION include)
Be aware that globbing isn't perfect, and the file list is only updated when cmake is run (i.e., it won't detect added or removed files on its own).

CMake Difference between include_directories and add_subdirectory?

I'm learning CMake for building C++ code, and struggling with the following concept. On my root level directory I have some cpp files and a CMakeLists.txt that succesfully generates some thrift code in a gen-cpp directory. My root level CMakeLists.txt contains :
include_directories("path-to-root"/gen-cpp). (along with the relevant thrift auto-generating and includes.
Everything compiles ok but I get run time dynamic library linked errors for undefined symbol referencing a class defined in the gen-cpp directory. When I move the files in the directory to the root level, it runs fine. what am I missing? (I had also adjusted the #include in the root level cpp directorie s to point to "path-to-root"/gen-cpp).
Is this a misunderstanding of using include_directory, where I should be using add_subdirectory. If the latter, would the code in gen-cpp needs its own CMakeLists.txt? Why is this additional file not needed, when the contents of said directory are root level?
add_subdirectory(source_dir): Used to add a subdirectory to the build. There is also a CMakeLists.txt file in the source_dir. This CMakeLists.txt file in the specified source directory will be processed immediately by CMake before processing in the current input file continues beyond this command.
include_directories(dir): Add the given directories to those the compiler uses to search for include files. These directories are added to the directory property INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES for the current CMakeLists file.
The include_directories() is used for adding headers search paths (-I flag) and add_subdirectory() will make no difference in this case.
I suppose, you need to list *.cpp files from gen-cpp folder in add_executable() or add_library() calls, in which you wish these symbols to be.
Alternatively, you can compile all thrift sources into the library and link it with your code.

CMake file for a C++ project

There is some CMake magic I don't understand. How should a CMakeLists.txt file look like for a small C++ project with directories like this:
.
├── bin
└── src
├── src
└── test
bin — directory for built program
src/src — directory for source
src/test — directory for tests
The tests will need to include files from src/src.
I'd like to manage all the operations from cmake, however at this moment I even can't cause cmake to compile file in src/c.cpp.
Any help, links are welcome.
Your CMake files should reside in the main source directory and its sub-directories. The easiest approach is to have one CMakeLists.txt in the src directory, which includes all files from src/src and src/test. A very minimalistic example could look like the following:
# CMakeLists.txt in src
project(myExample)
set(myExample_SOURCES
src/file1.cpp
src/main.cpp)
add_executable(myExecutable ${myExample_SOURCES})
set(myExample_test_SOURCES
src/file1.cpp
test/test_file2.cpp
test/test_main.cpp)
add_executable(myTestSuite ${myExample_test_SOURCES})
The output directory is normally not specified, because you can have different active
builds in parallel with
different options, e.g. you can have one build in debug mode -O0 -g, another one in release mode with -O2 -g flags and a third one in release mode with heavy optimization flags -O3. Every build resides in its own directory (e.g. build-debug, build-rel,
build-opt).
You should create the output directory (bin in your case) manually and call the cmake command inside this directory. As an argument you have to supply the path to the main CMakeLists.txt. In other words, just execute
cmake ../src
when you are inside bin. This will take all files from the src directory and put the output to the bin directory.
You can easily create a second output directory, say bin2, where you specify different build flags. The ccmake provides a very minimalistic GUI for that.
This helped me to start with cmake examples.html