Maven-like dependency management for C++?

Question

Say I have a C++ project that is split in several subprojects. The subproject all produce a DLL and different teams of developers work on each of the subproject. Now if I want to build the main project, is there a way to avoid having to build all the subprojects by myself?

In short, I'm looking for something that does the dependency management (i.e. for binary files and headers) in a similar way as Maven does for Java.

In fact, I tried to use Maven for this but this is rather cumbersome because I have to create the packages manually and quite frequently, Maven misses to pick up the most recent changes. Also, running the compilation is a bit of a hack as I have to call NAnt from within Maven (I use NAnt's feature to build Visual Studio solutions directly).

Any hints and ideas of how to do this?

Answer 1

I recommend to use the mother of all build dependency systems: make.

Answer 2

If you only want dependency management, try Ivy, it integrates nicely with Ant (and I assume NAnt can do the same based on this blog, which is linked from the Ivy site).

There is also Byldan, a .Net version of Maven. Don't know how well that will work for you though.

Answer 3

Make and GCC are a great combo for really good dependency checking.

GCC can generate 'make' dependency files automatically (-MD commandline switch), so as to be able to rebuild all sourcefiles that depend upon a given header, for example.

I have some simple rules that I cut-n-paste into my makefiles:

# compile c files   
%.o:    %.c
    ${CC} ${CFLAGS} -c $< -MD -MF $(<:%.c=%.dep) -o $@

# compile c++ files
%.opp:  %.cpp
    ${CPP} ${CPPFLAGS} -c $< -MD -MF $(<:%.cpp=%.dep) -o $@

Now if your object files are declared in say an OBJ_C and an OBJ_CPP list:

.PHONY: cleandep
cleandep:
    rm -f $(OBJ_C:%.o=%.dep) $(OBJ_CPP:%.opp=%.dep)

-include $(OBJ_C:%.o=%.dep) $(OBJ_CPP:%.opp=%.dep)

Make can of course track dependencies with other projects and such, e.g. rebuilding a shared libary as necessary, too.

For example, if your other teams always put their latest DLLs on some shared folder:

myapp: ${SRC_CPP} ${LIB_DIR}other_team.lib
  ...

${LIB_DIR}other_team.lib: /shared_folder/latest/other_team.lib
  cp /shared_folder/latest/other_team.lib ${LIB_DIR}other_team.lib

Answer 4

I would suggest using CMake. It is a multi-platform make file generator (generates Visual Studio or Eclipse CDT projects as well).

http://www.cmake.org/

I did really good experience with it. The best thing I like about it was the ability to produce generic project structure. So you can generically include sub-projects look-up for unit tests etc. without changing the script every time.

They have also lots of modules on how to find pre-installed build libraries, required for the project (like Boost, QT etc.)

Regards,
Ovanes

Answer 5

Try scons, you will be hooked. Make is outdated, difficult and expensive to maintain.