Boiler plate for C++ projects

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

• Sources, headers and mains separated in distinct folders
• Use of modern CMake for much easier compiling
• Setup for tests using doctest
• Continuous testing with Travis-CI, Appveyor and GitHub Actions, with support for C++17.
• Code coverage reports, including automatic upload to Coveralls.io and/or Codecov.io
• Code documentation with Doxygen

Structure

.
├── CMakeLists.txt
├── app
│   └── main.cpp
├── include
│   ├── example.h
│   └── exampleConfig.h.in
├── src
│   └── example.cpp
└── tests
    ├── dummy.cpp
    └── main.cpp

Sources go in src/, header files in include/, main programs in app/, and tests go in tests/ (compiled to unit_tests by default).

If you add a new executable, say app/hello.cpp, you only need to add the following two lines to CMakeLists.txt:

add_executable(main app/main.cpp)   # Name of exec. and location of file.
target_link_libraries(main PRIVATE ${LIBRARY_NAME})  # Link the executable to lib built from src/*.cpp (if it uses it).

You can find the example source code that builds the main executable in app/main.cpp under the Build section in CMakeLists.txt. If the executable you made does not use the library in src/, then only the first line is needed.

Building

Build by making a build directory (i.e. build/), run cmake in that dir, and then use make to build the desired target.

Example:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=[Debug | Coverage | Release]
make
./main
make test      # Makes and runs the tests.
make coverage  # Generate a coverage report.
make doc       # Generate html documentation.

.gitignore

The .gitignore file is a copy of the Github C++.gitignore file, with the addition of ignoring the build directory (build/).

Services

If the repository is activated with Travis-CI, then unit tests will be built and executed on each commit. The same is true if the repository is activated with Appveyor.

If the repository is activated with Coveralls/Codecov, then deployment to Travis will also calculate code coverage and upload this to Coveralls.io and/or Codecov.io

Setup

Using the GitHub template

Click the Use this template button to make a new repository from this template.

From command line

When starting a new project, you probably don't want the history of this repository. To start fresh you can use the setup script as follows:

git clone https://github.com/bsamseth/cpp-project  # Or use ssh-link if you like.
cd cpp-project
bash setup.sh

The result is a fresh Git repository with one commit adding all files from the boiler plate.