Build Instructions

The C++ Micro Services library provides CMake build scripts which allow the generation of platform and IDE specific project files.

The library should compile on many different platforms. Below is a list of tested compiler/OS combinations:

• GCC 4.5 (Ubuntu 11.04 and MacOS X 10.6)
• GCC 4.7 (Ubuntu 12.10)
• Visual Studio 2008, 2010, and 2012
• Clang 3.0 (Ubuntu 12.10 and MacOS X 10.6)

Prerequisites

• CMake 2.8 (Visual Studio 2010 and 2012 users should use the latest CMake version available)

Configuring the Build

When building the C++ Micro Services library, you have a few configuration options at hand.

General build options

• CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX The installation path.
• US_BUILD_SHARED_LIBS Specify if the library should be build shared or static. See Static Modules for detailed information about static CppMicroServices modules.
• US_BUILD_TESTING Build unit tests and code snippets.
• US_ENABLE_AUTOLOADING_SUPPORT Enable auto-loading of modules located in special sup-directories. See Auto Loading Modules for detailed information about this feature.
• US_ENABLE_THREADING_SUPPORT Enable the use of synchronization primitives (atomics and pthread mutexes or Windows primitives) to make the API thread-safe. If you are application is not multi-threaded, turn this option OFF to get maximum performance.
• US_USE_C++11 (advanced) Enable the usage of C++11 constructs.
• US_ENABLE_RESOURCE_COMPRESSION (advanced) Enable compression of embedded resources. See The Resources System for detailed information about the resource system.

Customizing naming conventions

• US_NAMESPACE The default namespace is us but you may override this at will.
• US_HEADER_PREFIX By default, all public headers have a "us" prefix. You may specify an arbitrary prefix to match your naming conventions.

The above options are mainly useful when embedding the C++ Micro Services source code in your own library and you want to make it look like native source code.

Configure the service base class

All service implementations must inherit from the same base class. The C++ Micro Services library provides a trivial class called us::Base for that purpose. However, most applications already have a special base class and you can configure the C++ Micro Services library to use that class.

• US_BASECLASS_NAME The fully-qualified name of the base class, e.g. my::OwnBaseClass. If you don't need support for service factories (see below) and don't want to enable US_BUILD_TESTING, this is all you need.
• US_ENABLE_SERVICE_FACTORY_SUPPORT (advanced) If you want support for service factories (they allow the customization of service objects for individual modules, see OSGi Service Platform Core Specification Release 4, Version 4.3, Section 5.6), switch this option to ON. If you also provided a custom US_BASECLASS_NAME, you need to set the US_BASECLASS_HEADER variable.
• US_BASECLASS_HEADER (advanced) The name of the header file containing the declaration for the base class specified in US_BASECLASS_NAME, e.g. myOwnBaseClass.h. You will also have to set US_BASECLASS_PACKAGE or US_BASECLASS_INCLUDE_DIRS and US_BASECLASS_LIBRARIES.
• US_BASECLASS_PACKAGE (advanced) If your specified a custom base class from a library which can be found via a CMake find_package command, enter the package name here. Most of the time, this will correctly set the values for US_BASECLASS_INCLUDE_DIRS, US_BASECLASS_LIBRARIES, and US_BASECLASS_LIBRARY_DIRS.
• US_BASECLASS_INCLUDE_DIRS (advanced) A list of include dirs needed to include the base class header file as specified in US_BASECLASS_HEADER.
• US_BASECLASS_LIBRARIES (advanced) A list of libraries to link the C++ Micro Services library against for resolving symbols needed for a custom base class.
• US_BASECLASS_LIBRARY_DIRS (advanced) A list of directories to look for the libraries specified in US_BASECLASS_LIBRARIES

Building

After CMake generated the specific build system files, just build the complete project. E.g. on Linux with Makefiles, type make inside the build directory and on Windows with Visual Studio build the BUILD_ALL project contained in the generated .sln file.

Installation

To install the header files, libraries, and executables, use make install for a Makefile based project or e.g. build the INSTALL project in Visual Studio. This will copy all required files to the path specified in the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX variable.

For more information on how to use the C++ Micro Services library, see the Getting Started guide.