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Cube project template

Cube is a C project with a project structure (Cube project structure) aim to be modular, in which Cube project could easily embedded into other Cube projects with 0 configuration.

What it is:

  • Building desktop application and static library on a unix-like environment.
  • Targeting Windows, Linux and Mac OS.
  • Include other Cube projects as thirdparties with 0 configuration.
  • Focus on modularity.

Prerequisite

Basic Unix-like environment with basic C tools installed. These are the application required:

  • ar
  • clang
  • mkdir
  • cp
  • echo
  • make
  • cat
  • rm
  • git
  • cd

Cube projects must be a git repository.

Note

Though Windows is not a Unix-like, there are tools like Cygwin that set up a Unix-like environment. You could also give an equivalent application to be use as the tools on specific platform by overriding Makefile variables in platform/toolchain, it is useful in cross-compiling.

Cube project structure

Directory Description
build Store distributable files of the project and its thirdparty Cube projects.
build/bin Stores built binary of the project and its thirdparty Cube projects. (<BIN_NAME>).
build/include Stores header files of the project and its thirdparty Cube projects. The header files is stored in their own directory with its project's name (build/include/<PROJECT_NAME>/).
build/lib Stores built binary with the file with the naming format as lib<PROJECT_NAME>.a.
cube Stores all the thirdparty Cube projects. It is handled by the Cube Makefile.
gen Stores the generated object files of the project.
include Stores the header files to be distributed, it will be copied to the build/include directory.
platform Stores platform specific configuration.
platform/flag Stores .flag text files record compiler flags required for building binary that depends on the current Cube projects (e.g. system library to be linked to for each platform).
platform/toolchain Stores configuration Makefiles for overriding build tools for specific platform, useful for cross-compiling.
source Stores all the .c source files.
source/bin Stores source files that will be build into executables. Each source file compiles to an executable with the same name and output to build/bin. The executable is linked to library in build/lib.
source/lib Stores source files that will be build into a static library, output to build/lib.

Note

Project name (<PROJECT_NAME>) is the name of the directory your project resided.

The Cube Makefile

The Cube Makefile resides at the root of the project. It should:

  • Build in release or debug mode,
  • Output the distributed files to the root build directory (more on Cube project structure),
  • Clean the build,
  • Signal the thirdparty Cube projects.

Build in release or debug mode

The Cube Makefile should have these phony targets:

  • release - build in release mode. DEBUG macro is defined.
  • debug - build in debug mode. RELEASE macro is defined.

The Cube Makefile should build the thirdparty Cube projects before building itself.

Outputing distributed files

All the distributed files are stored in the root build directory as stated in the Cube project structure.

Clean the build

The Cube Makefile should have a clean phony target that delete the files in its own gen directory. The root Cube project should be the one to clean up the root build directory.

The Cube Makefile should clean the thirdparty Cube projects before cleaning itself.

Signal the thirdparty Cube projects

The Cube Makefile should have these phony targets:

  • build-cube-release - signaling to build all the thirdparty Cube projects in release mode (calling the release phony target).
  • build-cube-debug - signaling to build all the thirdparty Cube projects in release debug (calling the debug phony target).
  • clean-cube - signaling to clean all the thirdparty Cube projects (calling the clean phony target).

The root Cube project pass these Makefile variables to the thirdparty Cube projects:

  • ROOT_DIR - Path of the root Cube project.
  • ROOT_BUILD_DIR - Path of the root build directory.
  • ROOT_BUILD_BIN_DIR - Path of the root build/bin directory.
  • ROOT_BUILD_INCLUDE_DIR - Path of the root build/include directory.
  • ROOT_BUILD_LIB_DIR - Path of the root build/lib directory.
  • ROOT_DEPENDENCIES_FILE - Path of a text file records dependencies and its sequence.
  • ROOT_FLAG_FILE - Path of a text file records compiler flags when compiling binary (e.g. shared library to be linked to).

the thirdparty Cube projects output to the root build directory using the given variables. The Cube Makefile should record the library's output path to ROOT_DEPENDENCIES_FILE once it is compiled in order to record the sequence of the dependencies. Duplicates in ROOT_DEPENDENCIES_FILE is prohibited.

The ROOT_DEPENDENCIES_FILE is named <PROJECT_NAME>.DEPENDENCIES and reside in ROOT_BUILD_LIB_DIR. In the ROOT_DEPENDENCIES_FILE, The libraries depends on the libraries before itself.

The ROOT_FLAG_FILE is named <PROJECT_NAME>.FLAG and reside in ROOT_BUILD_LIB_DIR. In the ROOT_FLAG_FILE, it stores the list of compiler flags.

Adding a Cube project as thirdparty library

Copy the Cube project to cube folder. Clean the project after adding, removing, modifying thirdparty libraries.

Linking to a system library

Add the flag links to the system library name into the .flag text file under flag directory according to the platform.

For an example, to link the pthread and m library for linux build, in flag/linux.flag:

-lpthread
-lm

Clean the project after adding, removing, modifying the .flag text files.

Cross-compiling

Cross-compiling can be achieve by providing the appropriate tools to the Makefile. The programmer should install the appropriate tools and then provide it via the toolchain Makefiles in platform/toolchain.

You could either:

  1. provide compilers native to each platforms and compile it on their own platform, or,
  2. provide a cross-compiler for all the toolchain Makefiles of other platforms and only compile from your native platform.

It is not advisible to use the second option as you could only compile from your native platform, which prevents other user from compiling on their own. It would only be useful when you are targeting a platform in which you cannot compile on it (e.g. mobile / embedded system), but it usually not the case as we are targeting desktops. Still, you are free to do whatever you want.

To use the toolchain Makefile of a specific platform with a specific arch. You can set PLATFORM Makefile variable for the target platform and ARCH Makefile variable for the target architecture. It will default to the host system if no value given.