I'm writing a program using boost program_options, I followed this instruction: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_47_0/more/getting_started/unix-variants.html#build-a-simple-program-using-boost and everythings is fine. The point now is that I want to distribute the source, so my problem is how to find where the boost libraries are installed on other linux machines (supposing they are). For example on my pc they are in /usr/lib64 but on the other machine they're installed in non-standard places.
I don't want to use tool like autotools, I'm using a simple plain Makefile.
Is there some tool provided with the boost installation to find where the libraries are? Is there some enviroment variables?
You either need to use a tool like autotools (I thoroughly recommend CMake, it's awesome), or have it available in a place that your compiler can find it. You can't configure everyone's system for them though, so usually the latter is insufficient.
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I've recently become interested in learning more about parallel computing, concurrency, etc. My main language is C++, so obviously I decided to use that in my personal studies.
After some research (read: looking things up on Google), I decided that using Intel's TBB library would be the most ideal.
The one thing that's got me stuck so far, though, is setting it up to use on my computer. I have looked on the Internet for some sort of tutorial on setting TBB up with MinGW (in my case, specifically Nuwen) and haven't really found anything.
So, here's my question: how would I set up TBB to use with a Nuwen distro?
TBB doesn't provides binaries for mingw in a Windows package. So you should build it from source code. You need compiler and GNU make;
Download source code(.zip) from https://github.com/01org/tbb/releases
Unpack somethere (not sure, but in common: beware of spaces in the dir path)
Open your console with compiler's environment, go to $archive_root/src and call gmake tbb tbbmalloc compiler=gcc. Also you could try to add stdver=c++11 in the build command if your complier supports this mode.
You will find a library build in the $archive_root/build/windows_... directory
I'm working on a large project, cross platform between Linux and OSx.
I'm would like to include boost functionalities, but I don't want to force all the the collaborators to install on their machine (with totally different environment) all the boost libraries.
If I compile boost on my machine, and put the static libraries inside the repository, which problem could I face? Can my colleagues use the same static libraries on their environment?
AFAIK there will be difference. The static libraries are not the same on OS X and Linux. Also compilation depends on toolset (see boost guide). And there can be issues if IDEs are different.
However you can compile both versions from one platform (see Cross-compilation) and put them in repository, but putting binary objects is not the best idea (even if they don't depend on platform).
I think you could try to compile and link boost on different platforms, maybe you will succeed, but you can not cover all the scenarios for sure. It is better to create boost compilation script and tell everyone to use it.
So I recently got fed up with Windows and installed Linux Mint. I am trying to get a project to build I have in Code::Blocks. I have installed Code::Blocks but I need glew(as well as a few other libraries). I found it in the software manager and installed it. I've managed to locate and include the header files. But I feel like the next step should be relatively straightforward and all over the internet but (perhaps due to lack of proper terminology) I have been as of yet unable to locate an answer.
Do I need to locate the files on my system and link to each library manually? This is what I did on windows but I just downloaded the binaries and knew where they were. I found one library from the software manager and linked to it manually but it just feels like I'm doing it the wrong way. Since it's "installed" on the system is there some quick way to link?
You should use two flags for linker '-l' and '-L'. You can set these flags somewhere in project properties.
The first one '-l' tells linker to link with particular library. For example glew, probably in /usr/lib is a file named libglew.so, when you link your program with '-lglew' flag, it will link it with glew library. Linker looks for libraries in few standard places: /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib and few extra. If you have your libs in nonstandard place, use '-L' flag to point these dirs.
Many linux distributions provide two kinds of packages with libraries, regular ones just with runtime, and devel ones (usually prefixed or suffixed with dev or devel) with header files and development version of libraries.
use build systems, Luke!
the typical way to develop/build software in *nix world is 3 steps:
configure stage -- before building smth you have to realize in what environment you are going to build your software... is everything that required is installed... it wouldn't be good if at compile stage (after few hours of compilation) you (or user who build your soft) got an error: unable to #include the 'xxx.h'. the most popular build systems are: cmake, my favorite after autotools. yout may try also scons or maybe crazy (b)jam...
compile stage -- usually just make all
install stage -- deploy just built software into the system. or other way: build packages for target distro (.deb/.rpm/&etc)
at configuration stage using test scripts (don't worry there are plenty of them for various use cases) you can find all required headers/libraries/programs/compiler options/whatever you need to compile your package... and yes: do not use hardcoded paths in your Makefiles (or whatever you use to make your binaries)
Answer to this question really depends on what you want to achieve. If you want just to build you app by yourself then you can just write path to libraries in your makefile, or your code editor settings. You may not even have to do that as if libraries installed by your linux distribution package manager, headers usually go to /usr/include and libraries to /usr/lib or /urs/lib64 etc. That locations are standard and you do not need to specify them explicitly. Anyway you need to specify libraries you want to link to.
If you want to create application that can be build by others, or by you on many different configurations/environments using something like cmake would be very helpful.
I have just downloaded the boost libraries from the boost website and extracted them to my desktop. I was hoping to just have a quick look at them and have them installed on my machine and perhaps use them in the future when I am more accustomed to C++.
When I extracted it, I was confused with all of the extracted files. There is all of the headers in the boost directory but tutorials mention running bootstrap.bat (I'm using Windows).
So I am asking this: do I simply extract the headers to my compilers include directory like normal to get boost up and running or do I need to do something else?
As I understand it from searching about, apparently "most" of boost is just templates and can be used simply by including the headers, but what about the rest?
Am I totally barking up the wrong tree?
Thanks for any help
Since you mentioned you run Windows, take a look at this automated installer:
► http://www.boostpro.com/download/
Also, some general advice:
do I simply extract the headers to my compilers include directory
No! Do not pollute your compiler's includes with third-party includes; make a separate directory specifically for a particular library. You'll then need to tell your specific IDE in what directory it can find the library headers.
I usually use boostpro's installer, it is less work. I vaguely remember having to set up the BOOST_ROOT environment variable on one of my systems to use it.
The libraries that contained compiled source should be included in the installer.
If you don't use the installer (or don't set up your build correctly), and try to use the libraries that need it you will likely get some linker errors when you try and compile your program. Usually if you take those linker errors and plop them in google it tells you pretty quick which libraries you need to include in your build system. I use CMake for that and have been very happy..
Just add the root boost directory to include paths of your compiler/IDE (so if you have Boost extracted to C:\Boost, the compiler will use that path, not C:\Boost\boost).
Don't do any copying of the boost folder to your compiler's include directory, because it may make upgrading Boost harder in the future.
Also if you plan to use any of boost's compiled libraries, add Boost's lib directory to compiler's library search paths. Configuring the compiling step is a matter of putting the right toolset parameter to boost's build tool. If you have your command line environment configured properly, bootstrap should run and compile the builder without any problems, and the Boost builder should properly detect your toolset, so no parameters will be necessary.
As you do such configuration only once every time you do a clean install of your favorite compiler, it's not as hard or daunting as it seems.
I have been using a socket library for C++. Some other info: 32 bit Linux, Codelite and GCC toolset. I want to be able to compile my program for Windows using the windows edition of Codelite. The socket library I have been using doesn’t have a mingw32 build of the library, but it’s open source. So how can I make a mingw32 build of the socket library so I can make a windows build using the source provided?
Most open source linux libraries are built with the make build system (although there others like jam etc, and custom written scripts for building). MinGW comes with the make utility, it's mingw32-make.exe. It may be possible (if you're lucky) to simply rebuild your library by making it on Windows.
The more usual scenario is that you will need to configure the project before you can build it though. The windows shell doesn't support the scripting requirements required to configure, but there's another part of the MinGW project that does called MSYS. If you install msys and all the required tools you need for it, you'll be able to ./configure your project before running make.
Of course, the above will only work if the library is written to be portable. There are some breaking difference between the linux socket implementation (sys/socket.h), and the windows implementation (winsock2.h). You may be forced to edit chunks of the code to ensure that it is versioned correctly for the platform (or that any dependencies required are also built for Windows).
Also, there is the chance that the library may already be built for Windows, but using a different compiler like MSVC, which produces .lib and .dll files. Mingw requires .a files for libraries, but a clever feature is the ability to link directly against a .dll, without the need for an imports library, so you can often use an existing windows library that was not built against Mingw (Although this won't help for static linking). There is also a tool, dlltool, which can convert .lib to .a.
If you give detail on the specific library you're working with, I may be able to pick out for you what needs to be done to run it on Win.
You port it to the new platform. :)
You're fortunate that it is opensource, because then it would be practically impossible to port it (You'd have to pay $$$'s to get a copy of the code for a particular license, or rewrite the entire product).
Enjoy.
Alternatively, they may well already have a port... Check the documentation for the library you are using.
First off your going to need to make sure that you aren't including any Linux specific libraries.