Atheneum Boilerplate

This project serves as a template for consistent, cross-platform, open-source C++ library development.

One goal is to make it as simple as possible to go from cloning to a tested build with as few steps as possible. The general process should be as simple as:

cmake .
cmake --build . --config Release
ctest -C Release

Directory structure

• root
  • cmake
  • docs
  • examples
  • include
  • src
  • test
  • vendor

Version control: Git

This setup relies on the projects being managed in a Git repository.

Build system: CMake

Manages the overall build with specific scripts for handling:

• Defaulting build type (i.e., Release)
• Uniform compiler flags
• Identifying build target architecture (i.e., operating system, compiler, and CPU instruction architecture) (TODO)
• Automatic versioning based on Git repository tags
• Optional static or dynamic libraries
• Handling of MSVC and Windows specific requirements (e.g., MT/MD flags, export headers)

Dependencies: Git submodules

Where possible, dependencies are added using git submodules. In a few exceptional cases, a dependency may be vendored directly in the root repository.

Error handling (TODO)

Consistent approach to handling error callbacks.

Testing: CTest and Googletest

Unit tests are created by googletest and automatically detected by CTest and added to the test suite

Formatting: Clang format

The simplest way to implement formatting using the .clang-format file is to integrate clang format support into your IDE, which can be configured to automatically format code upon file-save. Else,

• On Windows, Visual Studio, set up clang format execution rules using Tools > Options > Text Editor > C/C++ > Formatting
• On Mac, brew install clang-format and run at the command line with clang-format -i <file>
• On Ubuntu, sudo apt install clang-format and run at the command line with clang-format -i <file>

NOTE: ensure the version of clang-format your development team is using locally matches the version used in .github/workflows/clang-format-check.yml or you may get false errors. The .clang-format file can be set to a version earlier than your current.

Code Coverage: Codecov

CI: GitHub Actions

Automatic builds, testing, packaging, and deployment.

Script Bindings (TODO)

Documentation: Doxygen + ReadTheDocs(?) (TODO)

Licensing: BSD-3

Be sure to use your own copyright for your projects using this structure.