GPV's Utility Libraries Collection for C++

version 1.1

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This is a collection of utility libraries for C++, based on the standard C++ library, with minimal external dependencies (some of the libraries depend on boost). These libraries can come in handy for some small works (e.g. command line utilities) or used in other projects.

This collection include these libraries:

• gpvulc_text - Text buffering, processing and parsing (dependencies: none)
• gpvulc_path - File/directory path management (dependencies: none)
• gpvulc_console - Console utility (dependencies: none)
• gpvulc_time - Date/time management (dependencies: boost)
• gpvulc_filesystem - File system management (dependencies: boost, gpvulc_time, gpvulc_path, gpvulc_text)
• gpvulc_cmd - Command line utility (dependencies: gpvulc_filesystem)
• gpvulc_json - JSON serialization utility based on rapidjson (dependencies: rapidjson)

You can find the full documentation (automatically generated with Doxygen) and a distribution (in ZIP archives) of external libraries sources and binaries for VS2015 along with each release (see Releases section in this GitHub page). To get the compiled binaries for Google C++ Testing Framework a Visual Studio 2015 project was added in depend/googletest/googletest-release-1.8.1/vs2015/ folder. For boost you can find sources in depend/boost/src folder (VS2015 projects in depend/boost/src/vs2015).

Remarks

Even if designed with portability in mind, all libraries were developed with Visual Studio 2015 and tested on Windows platform (a porting to other platforms should be a nice contribution). Additional projects are available for Code::Blocks configured with gcc as compiler. Some remarks about the gpvulc libraries:

• gpvulc_text is based on the standard C++ library, designed to provide a user-friendly programming interface, partly inspired by C# String class. This library should work with most operating systems.
• gpvulc_path is a file path management utility, it is something like boost_filesystem library; if you are already using boost you are encouraged to use boost_filesystem. This library should work with most operating systems.
• gpvulc_console is a console utility library.
• gpvulc_time depends on boost for gregorian date system. This library should work with most operating systems.
• gpvulc_filesystem depends on gpvulc_time (thus also on boost) and is not completely ported to all operating systems.
• gpvulc_cmd provides a fast way to develop command line file processing utilities (it depends on gpvulc_filesystem).
• gpvulc_json - parser and writer classes that use rapidjson to parse and write documents into a string buffer, exceptions are handled in order to complete the document parsing, collecting errors in a final error summary; an exception can be thrown at the end with the error summary attached (it depends only on rapidjson).

The following naming convention is adopted for folders:

• include: header files
• src: source files
• lib: library files
• bin: executable files
• projects: solutions and projects
• TEMP: intermediate files generated by the building process

Projects for Visual Studio 2015 and Code::Blocks are provided in this version.

Note: all these libraries use multi-byte character set, no Unicode support is currently implemented.

Important: these libraries must be linked as static libraries, they are not designed to be compiled and linked as dynamic linking libraries. This feature could be a future development, changes are needed to prevent allocation and deallocation in different modules.

Warning for Code::Blocks: it is not possible to link 32 bit libraries with the default Code::Blocks/mingw 64 bit installation (32 bit libraries cannot be found). The toolchain installed along with Code::Blocks-mingw (64 bit) cannot build 32 bit. You need to install the 32 bit toolchain yourself and point CodeBlocks to use that one to build for 32 bit.

Dependencies

Some libraries use boost libraries (version 1.70.0). The boost folder is assumed to be in a folder depend (in the upper level folder, at the same level as this repository folder), otherwise you must update the projects (the same holds for rapidjson). Libraries dependencies are summarized here:

• gpvulc_text: none
• gpvulc_path: none
• gpvulc_console: none
• gpvulc_time: boost
• gpvulc_filesystem: boost, gpvulc_time, gpvulc_path, gpvulc_text
• gpvulc_cmd: gpvulc_filesystem (and its dependencies)
• gpvulc_json: rapidjson (version 1.1.0)

For some libraries (e.g. gpvulc_text and gpvulc_path) test projects are provided, implemented using Google C++ Testing Framework.

Libraries and their test projects are separated, so you can use the libraries without getting Google C++ Testing Framework.

If you don't want or cannot use the distribution provided with the releases you can follow the procedure described hereafter.

In the depend folder you must put a distribution of the external libraries used: Google C++ Testing Framework, boost and rapidjson. Include files of Google C++ Testing Framework must be put in depend/boost/ (e.g. depend/boost/boost/). Compiled binaries of Google C++ Testing Framework must be put in a proper subfolder of depend/googletest/lib/ folder (e.g. gtest.lib and gtestd.lib in depend/googletest/lib/VC140-x64/ and depend/googletest/lib/VC140-x86/ for Visual Studio 2015 with 64 and 32 bit platforms). For boost libraries include files must be put in depend/boost/ (e.g. depend/boost/boost/) and compiled binaries must be put in depend/boost/lib/ folder. For rapidjson library include files must be put in depend/rapidjson/ (e.g. depend/rapidjson/rapidjson/)

You can change this configuration editing the property sheeets (*.props files) in gpvulc/projects/vs2015/ and in gpvulc-tests/ (remember to change also the BOOST_VER variable, if needed).

Contributing

If you find bugs or you have any new idea for improvements and new features you can create an issue on GitHub (please follow the suggested template, filling the proper sections). To open issues or make pull requests please follow the instructions in CONTRIBUTING.md.

About multi-platform support: any contribution to support other platforms and compilers is welcome.

If you want to update the libraries you should build and run the tests in gpvulc-tests/ folder with Google C++ Testing Framework before submitting your changes.