Keyframe / c_start

C build template for static,dynamic and exe. Crossplatform

What is it

C project template, built on top of make and GNU core utils and binutils. Works with GCC and LLVM/Clang. Template is oriented towards building static and dynamic (at the same time, man!) libraries across platforms.

This is an effort to decouple the build system out from production and extend it towards more general use, where you would start any C project with this template and use it to build a static or dynamic library or an executable.

Features

Warning: Don't use this for exes, yet. Usable, but alpha alert!

You can build static or dynamic library or even an exe out of same make, across platforms!

Main feature are modules, auto discovered, which get compiled into their own object. Within each module you get automatic platform overrides:

src
├── README.md
├── module_one
│   ├── _osx
│   │   ├── module.mk
│   │   └── module_one_override.c
│   ├── module.mk
│   ├── module_one.c
│   ├── module_one.h
│   ├── module_one_override.c
│   └── module_one_override.h
└── module_two
    ├── _osx
    │   └── module.mk
    ├── module.mk
    └── module_two.c

In this example, within module_one, _osx/module_one_override.c will override module_one_override.c from the root of module_one. Thus, any file that exists in platform subdirectory will override its parent if they share the same name.

In order to accomplish this, each module has to have module.mk file, and submodule (platform directories) has to have their own module.mk. Templates for both are in make_tpls. Eventually, I'll make a shell script to scaffold directory structures.

Through those module/submodule.mk files you can override all the compile/link/include flags for each module/submodule as you wish.

Usage

make followed by either release or debug and then one of the flags

• PLATFORM= with either of the following osx windows linux ios android
• BUILD_TYPE= with either of the following static dynamic exe libs all

example: make release PLATFORM=osx BUILD_TYPE=libs will build static and dynamic libs in release mode for MacOS

TODO

• Refactor static, dynamic, exe into separate branches ✓
• Test other platforms (linux and mingw a priority)
• Revise build directory structure
• Sane defaults for libs/exe if none provided, along with auto-detect of the platform
• ASM (NASM) integration into build
• make install - with prefix and probably with public/private structure for headers within modules
• Optional: Optimization targets. I do them manually, but I may reconsider - it would be a third level down then src/module/_osx/x86_64 for example

Further down the line:

• Convert everything into a single file utility to scaffold this from the command line
• Introduce external library dependencies, based on simple JSON, along with custom pre/build/post scripts, if needed. I already have that in the full build system I use, but it needs decoupling. Think of it as a poor man's npm install.