Simple and efficient distribution of C++/Boost source code (amalgamation)

Question

My job mostly consists of engineering analysis, but I find myself distributing code more and more frequently among my colleagues. A big pain is that not every user is proficient in the intricacies of compiling source code, and I cannot distribute executables.

I've been working with C++ using Boost, and the problem is that I cannot request every sysadmin of every network to install the libraries. Instead, I want to distribute a single source file (or as few as possible) so that the user can g++ source.c -o program.

So, the question is: can you pack the Boost libraries with your code, and end up with a single file? I am talking about the Boost libraries which are "headers only" or "templates only".

As an inspiration, please look at the distribution of SQlite or the Lemon Parser Generator; the author amalgamates the stuff into a single source file which is trivial to compile.

Thank you.

Edit:

A related question in SO is for Windows environment. I work in Linux.

Answer 1

There is a utility that comes with boost called bcp, that can scan your source and extract any boost header files that are used from the boost source. I've setup a script that does this extraction into our source tree, so that we can package the source that we need along with our code. It will also copy the boost source files for a couple of boost libraries that we use that are no header only, which are then compiled directly into our applications.

This is done once, and then anybody who uses the code doesn't even need to know that it depends on boost. Here is what we use. It will also build bjam and bcp, if they haven't been build already.

#!/bin/sh
BOOST_SRC=.../boost_1_43_0
DEST_DIR=../src/boost
TOOLSET=
if ( test `uname` = "Darwin") then
    TOOLSET="--toolset=darwin"
fi

# make bcp if necessary
if ( ! test -x $BOOST_SRC/dist/bin/bcp ) then
    if ( test -x $BOOST_SRC/tools/jam/*/bin.*/bjam ) then
        BJAM=$BOOST_SRC/tools/jam/*/bin.*/bjam
    else
        echo "### Building bjam"
        pushd $BOOST_SRC/tools/jam
        ./build_dist.sh
        popd
        if ( test -x $BOOST_SRC/tools/jam/*/bin.*/bjam ) then
            BJAM=$BOOST_SRC/tools/jam/*/bin.*/bjam
        fi

    fi
    echo "BJAM: $BJAM"
    pushd $BOOST_SRC/tools/bcp
    echo "### Building bcp"
    echo "$BJAM $TOOLSET"
    $BJAM $TOOLSET
    if [ $? == "0" ]; then
        exit 1;
    fi
    popd
fi

if ( ! test -x $BOOST_SRC/dist/bin/bcp) then
    echo "### Couldn't find bpc"
    exit 1;
fi

mkdir -p $DEST_DIR

echo "### Copying boost source"
MAKEFILEAM=$DEST_DIR/libs/Makefile.am
rm $MAKEFILEAM
# Signals
# copy source libraries
mkdir -p $DEST_DIR/libs/signals/src
cp $BOOST_SRC/libs/signals/src/* $DEST_DIR/libs/signals/src/.
echo -n "boost_sources += " >> $MAKEFILEAM
for f in `ls $DEST_DIR/libs/signals/src | fgrep .cpp`; do
    echo -n "boost/libs/signals/src/$f " >> $MAKEFILEAM
done
echo >> $MAKEFILEAM

echo "### Extracting boost includes"
$BOOST_SRC/dist/bin/bcp --scan --boost=$BOOST_SRC ../src/*/*.[Ch] ../src/boost/libs/*/src/*.cpp ../src/smart_assert/smart_assert/priv/fwd/*.hpp $DEST_DIR
if [ $? != "0" ]; then
    echo "### bcp failed"
    rm -rf $DEST_DIR
    exit 1;
fi

Answer 2

Why not just check in all the necessary files to SVN, and send you co-workers the URL of the repository? Then they can check out the code whenever they want to, do an 'svn up' any time they want to update to the latest version, etc.

Answer 3

Have you considered just writing a build script for a build system like SCons?
You could write a python script to download boost, unpack it compile the needed files (you can even run bjam if needed) and compile your own code.
The only dependency your colleagues will need is Python and SCons.

Answer 4

Run the preprocessor on your code and save the output. If you started with one main.cpp with a bunch of includes in it, you will end up with one file where all of the includes have been sucked in. If you have multiple cpp files, you will have to concatinate them together and then run the preprocessor on the concatinated file, this should work as long as you don't have any duplicate global symbol names.

For a more portable method, do what sqlite does and write your own script to just combine and concatinate together the files you created+boost, and not get the system includes. See mksqlite3c.tcl in the sqlite code
http://www2.sqlite.org/src/finfo?name=tool/mksqlite3c.tcl

Answer 5

If you're on a Debian-derived variety of Linux, well problems like this just shouldn't come up: let the packaging system and policy manual do the work. Just make it clear that the libboost-dev or whatever package is a build-dependency of your code and needs to be installed beforehand, and then /usr/include/boost should be right there where your code expects to find it. If you're using a more recent version of boost than the distro ships, it's probably worth figuring out how to package it yourself and work within the existing packaging/dependencies framework rather than reinventing another one.

I'm not familiar enough with .rpm based distros to comment on how things work there. But knowing I can easily setup exactly the build environment I need is, for me, one of the biggest advantages of Debian based development over Windows.