Template For C++ Projects

This is a template for C++ projects. What you get:

• Library, executable and test code separated in distinct folders.
• Use of modern CMake for building and compiling.
• External libraries fetched by CMake or cloned by Git.
• External libraries installed and managed by Conan or VCPKG.
• Unit testing using Catch2
• General purpose libraries: JSON, spdlog, cxxopts and fmt.
• Continuous integration testing with Github Actions.
• Code coverage reports, including automatic upload to Codecov.
• Code documentation with Doxygen.

Structure

├── CMakeLists.txt
├── app
│   ├── CMakesLists.txt
│   └── main.cc
├── cmake
│   └── cmake modules
├── docs
│   ├── Doxyfile
│   └── html/
├── external
│   ├── CMakesLists.txt
│   ├── ...
├── src
│   ├── CMakesLists.txt
│   ├── my_lib.h
│   └── my_lib.cc
└── tests
    ├── CMakeLists.txt
    └── main.cc

Library code goes into src/, main program code in app/ and tests go in tests/.

Software Requirements

• CMake 3.16+
• GNU Makefile
• Doxygen
• Conan or VCPKG
• MSVC 2017 (or higher), G++9 (or higher), Clang++9 (or higher)
• Code Coverage (only on GNU|Clang): lcov, gcovr

Building

First, clone this repo and do the preliminary work:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/franneck94/CppProjectTemplate
make prepare

• App Executable: The build type can be Debug/Release/MinSizeRel or RelWithDebInfo

cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
cmake --build . --config Release --target main
cd bin
./main

• Unit testing: The build type should be Debug for GCC/Clang and Release for MSVC (due to bug).

cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
cmake --build . --config Debug --target unit_tests
cd bin
./unit_tests

• Documentation

cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
cmake --build . --config Debug --target docs

• Code Coverage (Unix only): The build type has to be Coverage.

cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Coverage -DENABLE_CODE_COVERAGE=ON ..
cmake --build . --config Coverage --target coverage

For more info about CMake see here.