renatoathaydes / dartle_c

A build system for C, based on Dartle

DartleC

A Dartle extension to compile C projects.

It compiles C code into object files incrementally (compileC task), then generates a binary executable from the object files (linkC task).

DartleC can be used as a command-line utility, dcc, or as a Dartle library (to integrate with other Dartle-based tools).

Using the executable dcc

DartleC can be used as a command-line utility to compile C code.

To use it in that way, activate it with pub:

dart pub global activate dartle_c

After this, running dcc will compile all C files found in a src directory to the out dir, generating a binary executable named a.out.

Tasks

• compileC - Compiles C source code into object files.
• linkC - Links object files, creating a binary executable.
• archiveObjects - Archives object files, creating a static library.
• cleanC - Deletes the outputs of all other tasks.

Both linkC and archiveObjects depend on compileC, with linkC being the default task. Hence, running dcc without arguments will invoke the compileC and linkC tasks, as necessary.

To only compile the C source files without generating an executable, and using a specific cstd version, as an example:

dcc compileC :-cstd=c99

The : before the argument to the compileC task is necessary because otherwise Dartle uses the argument instead of passing it on to the task.

Notice that Dartle allows calling tasks by typing only their partial names, so for example, the compileC task can be run by typing dcc comp or dcc coC. To run linkC, if no extra tasks are added, requires only dcc l (as no other tasks start with an l).

To run the archive task, it's enough to invoke dcc ar.

Useful options:

# show usage and available options
dcc -h

# show all tasks
dcc -s

# enable verbose (`debug`) output
dcc -l debug

Configuring dcc

To configure dcc, create a dcc.yaml file at the project root directory with contents as shown below (all properties are optional):

compiler: gcc
compiler-args: [ "-std=c2x", "-Wall", "-Wextra", "-Werror", "-ansi", "-pedantic" ]
linker-args: [ "-shared" ]
objects-dir: out
source-dirs: [ src ]

# instead of source-dirs, you can also list files explicitly:
# source-files: [foo.c, bar.c]

output: my-binary

archiver: ar
archiver-args: [ "-v" ]
archive: out/libmylib.a

The compiler is chosen depending on the platform if not provided. You can also set the CC environment variable to choose one. Similarly, the archiver can be set with the AR environment variable.

Task arguments are added to the respective *-args provided in the YAML configuration file.

Using DartleC as a library.

To include DartleC in your existing Dartle build, or to write your own build system based on DartleC, add it as a dependency of your Dart project:

dart pub add dartle_c

Check this project's example for how to use its API.