How to use the Emscripten toolchain with biicode?

Question

How can I add an Emscripten compilation target for my program using biicode. I would like to do a "bii cpp:configure" or a build with params, that would build my C/C++ source code using the downloaded Emscripten SDK (emsdk) or the installed Emscripten (from a package manager).

Answer 1

So you want to #include a emscripten header in your code and get the library? I would suggest to write a block that acts as a proxy and manage to download and install the prebuilt packages, as they seem quite good. This can be done in a several ways:

1. Write block with a hook, which is a script in python. You have for example the OpenCV one here: http://www.biicode.com/diego/opencv . That will install it to a biicode predefined location, which can be accessed in the CMakeLists.txt via a cmake variable ${BIICODE_ENV_DIR} . You can use that variable to define and link libraries. You should add the headers you want to include in your block, so you can actually #include things, and have biicode retrieve things. Do not forget to add the hook to the biicode.conf [hooks] section

2. Write a block with a cmake script. In CMake it is also possible to retrieve and install files. In this case you can just write and INCLUDE(youruser/yourblock/yourcmakescript) in the CMakeLists.txt of the block that wants to "consume" and use emscripten. That file will be handle exactly the same as C/C++ files, they will appear initially as unresolved in "bii deps" and can be resolved with "bii find" or adding the block to the [requirements] section.

I initially recommend this as the library seems a bit complex to build, it does not have standard CMakeLists.txt, but custom configures.

EDIT: Now I see with your comments that this is not what you actually want, but to use a custom compilation (cross compilation to js) toolchain. This can be actually done using custom toolchains: http://docs.biicode.com/c++/building.html#using-a-custom-tool-chain This could require some mastery of both CMake and the emscripten toolchain. The integration of this toolchains is a little bit tricky now, it is being revamped and will be released in a few weeks. Note that the rest of the answer is still valid, you can easily write a block with a hook that manages to install the emscripten tool from binaries.