OTTO - Automate C/C++ CMake for Large Repositories

For large repository with many projects, dependencies and contributors, getting everything to work nicely is not an easy task. Standardization is the biggest issue. The idea behind this project is to get any project up and running with the tooling needed for a modern C or C++ codebase.

Features in a nutshell:

• Encapsulate complexities of cmake in module files
• Very small and simple makefiles for end user projects
• Handle external dependencies between projects using find_package
• Out of source compilation
• Support for installing both 'release' and 'debug' binaries and shared objects
• Support for installation target. The binaries can be installed with the command make install.
• Automatic version.h generated files.
• Provide toolchain support

Project Structure

Following is the main structure how the code is divided. Main important files are the files that end in cmake and are in templates directory. Samples directory contains two samples on how to use and can be removed later.

.
├── LICENSE.md
├── otto.cmake
├── otto_create_version.cmake
├── otto_external_dependency.cmake
├── otto_find.cmake
├── otto_install.cmake
├── otto_run.cmake
├── otto_set_toolchain.cmake
├── README.md
├── sample
│   ├── sayHello
│   │   ├── CMakeLists.txt
│   │   ├── include
│   │   │   ├── dummy.h
│   │   │   └── sayHello.h
│   │   └── src
│   │       ├── sayHello.cpp
│   │       └── sayit.cpp
│   └── saySomething
│       ├── CMakeLists.txt
│       └── src
│           └── saySomething.cpp
├── templates
│   ├── ProjectConfig.cmake
│   └── version.h.in
└── toolchains
    └── linux.x86_64.gcc92.cmake

8 directories, 19 files

Getting Started

Note: Make sure to use cmake 3.15 or above as some of the generator expressions that are in use do not work properly with older revisions.

1. Clone the repository to get the boilerplate:

git clone https://github.com/jainvishal/otto.git
cd otto

2. Configure otto to match your release and installation environment. otto.cmake provides following variables that can be tuned.

• CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX - Where to publish headers, shared library and binary
• OTTO_INSTALL_RPATH_PREFIX - Expected path in production where libraries and binaries are installed. This sets the rpath.

3. Create your toolchain file (with path to compiles and flags). See provided toolchain file for ideas.

4. Looking at a test project that publishes header, a shared library and a binary. It is sayHello project in sample directory. Its CMakeLists.txt file shall provide enough guidance on the usage. To compile, follow below steps in sayHello root directory.

   1. configure:

      cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DOTTO_TOOLCHAIN=linux.x86_64.gcc91

      1. Change -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to Debug to compile in debug mode.
      2. Change -DOTTO_TOOLCHAIN to whichever toolchain file is required.

   2. To compile: (on linux make in build directory can also be used, also note that this could be skipped as next step will performt the build as well)

      cmake --build build

   3. To install (in CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX): (on linux make install in build directory will do same)

      cmake --build build --target install

   So now you compiled a project that produces header file, a shared library and also a test binary. It also installs cmake configuration files for other projects to use find_package to configure flags.

5. Next step now is to use what we just accomplished. Look at saySomething project. Again check CMakeLists.txt in that project for the idea on how to specify external dependencies.

   1. Setup dependencies: Main variable to look for is OTTO_DEPENDENCY_ON. It is a list of <package>:<version>, e.g. if the project depends on:

      • sayHello version 1.5
      • myMonitoring version 7.65

      Value of OTTO_DEPENDENCY_ON would be sayHello:1.5 myMonitoring:7.65. Note that for now this will only work if both packages and their versions are compiled using otto (or at least published in same format as otto publishes).

   2. Configure and compile: Use same steps as sayHello.

   3. Test: When saySomething (from published area) is run or ldd or objdump -x is used on it, it will show that it is using right rpath to find libraries from OTTO_INSTALL_RPATH_PREFIX path followed by CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX.

Output Directory Structure

.
├── lib
│   └── cmake
│       └── sayHello-0.0 -> ../../sayHello/0.0.1/cmake
├── sayHello
│   └── 0.0.1
│       ├── cmake
│       │   ├── sayHelloConfig.cmake
│       │   ├── sayHelloConfigVersion.cmake
│       │   ├── sayHelloTargets.cmake
│       │   └── sayHelloTargets-debug.cmake
│       ├── include
│       │   ├── dummy.h
│       │   └── sayHello.h
│       └── linux.x86_64.gcc92
│           ├── bin_debug
│           │   └── sayHello
│           └── lib_debug
│               ├── libsayHello.so -> libsayHello.so.0
│               ├── libsayHello.so.0 -> libsayHello.so.0.0.1
│               └── libsayHello.so.0.0.1
└── saySomething
    └── 1.0.0
        └── linux.x86_64.gcc92
            └── bin_debug
                └── saySomething

14 directories, 11 files