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Installation

The following compilers are supported: - GCC 11.4 or higher - Clang 14.0 or higher - MSVC 17.8 (19.38) or higher

You can include the source files into your build or compile it using cmake and vcpkg.

Option 1: Using vcpkg

Refer to this port:

vcpkg install reflectcpp

or, if you are in manifest mode:

vcpkg add port reflectcpp

If the library cannot be found, please update vcpkg itself to make sure the newest ports are installed. You might also want to update the builtin-baseline tag in the vcpkg.json of your project.

If you want to support formats other than JSON, please install the appropriate vcpkg features. Refer to the link above to find out which features are supported in the vcpkg port.

Option 2: Using Conan

Simply use this recipe.

Option 3: Compilation using cmake

This will compile reflect-cpp with JSON support only. You can then include reflect-cpp in your project and link to the binary.

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_CXX_STANDARD=20 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j 4  # gcc, clang
cmake --build build --config Release -j 4  # MSVC

Option 4: Include source files into your own build

Simply copy the contents of the folders include and src into your source repository or add it to your include path and also add src/reflectcpp.cpp and src/reflectcpp_json.cpp and src/yyjson.c to your source files for compilation. If you want to link to your own version of YYJSON, then only add src/reflectcpp.cpp and src/reflectcpp_json.cpp. If you don't need JSON support, then only add src/reflectcpp.cpp.

If you need support for other serialization formats like flexbuffers or XML, you should also add src/reflectcpp_<format>.cpp and include and link the respective libraries, as listed in the section on serialization formats.

Option 5: Compilation using cmake and vcpkg

If you want serialization formats other than JSON, you can either install them manually or use vcpkg.

To install vcpkg:

git submodule update --init
./vcpkg/bootstrap-vcpkg.sh # Linux, macOS
./vcpkg/bootstrap-vcpkg.bat # Windows
# You may be prompted to install additional dependencies.

To compile the library:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_CXX_STANDARD=20 -DREFLECTCPP_AVRO=ON -DREFLECTCPP_BSON=ON -DREFLECTCPP_CAPNPROTO=ON -DREFLECTCPP_CBOR=ON -DREFLECTCPP_FLEXBUFFERS=ON -DREFLECTCPP_MSGPACK=ON -DREFLECTCPP_XML=ON -DREFLECTCPP_TOML=ON -DREFLECTCPP_UBJSON=ON -DREFLECTCPP_YAML=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j 4 # gcc, clang
cmake --build build --config Release -j 4 # MSVC

To use reflect-cpp in your project:

add_subdirectory(reflect-cpp) # Add this project as a subdirectory

set(REFLECTCPP_AVRO ON) # Optional
set(REFLECTCPP_BSON ON) # Optional
set(REFLECTCPP_CBOR ON) # Optional
set(REFLECTCPP_FLEXBUFFERS ON) # Optional
set(REFLECTCPP_MSGPACK ON) # Optional
set(REFLECTCPP_TOML ON) # Optional
set(REFLECTCPP_UBJSON ON) # Optional
set(REFLECTCPP_XML ON) # Optional
set(REFLECTCPP_YAML ON) # Optional

target_link_libraries(your_project PRIVATE reflectcpp) # Link against the library

Troubleshooting vcpkg

vcpkg is a great, but very ambitious and complex project (just like C++ is a great, but very ambitious and complex language). Here are some of the you might run into and how to resolve them:

  1. A lot of problems can simply be resolved by deleting the build directory using rm -rf build.

  2. Environment variable VCPKG_FORCE_SYSTEM_BINARIES must be set on arm, s390x, ppc64le and riscv platforms. - This usually happens on arm platforms like the Apple Silicon chips and can be resolved by simply preceding your build with export VCPKG_FORCE_SYSTEM_BINARIES=arm or export VCPKG_FORCE_SYSTEM_BINARIES=1.

  3. On some occasions you might be asked to specify a compiler. You can do so by simply adding it to the cmake command as follows: cmake -S . -B build ... -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=gcc -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++ or cmake -S . -B build ... -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang-17 -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++-17 (or whatever supported compiler you would like to use).

Option 6: Compilation using Conan

To install Conan (assuming you have Python and pipx installed):

pipx install conan
conan profile detect

For older versions of pip, you can also use pip instead of pipx.

To install the basic (JSON-only) version, cd into the reflect-cpp repository and execute the following:

conan build . --build=missing -s compiler.cppstd=gnu20

You can call conan inspect . to get an overview of the supported options.

If you want to include all formats supported on Conan, do the following:

conan build . --build=missing -s compiler.cppstd=gnu20 -o *:with_cbor=True -o *:with_flatbuffers=True -o *:with_msgpack=True -o *:with_toml=True -o *:with_ubjson=True -o *:with_xml=True -o *:with_yaml=True