C/C++ libraries in your package

Typically, Bob‘s core packages include both a pure C++ library as well as Python bindings for the C++ code.

If you want to provide a library with pure C++ code in your package as well, you can use the bob.extension.Library class. It will automatically compile your C/C++ code using CMake into a shared library that you can link to your own C/C++-Python bindings, as well as in the C++ code of other C++/Python packages. Again, a complete example can be downloaded via:

$ git clone https://gitlab.idiap.ch/bob/bob.extension.git
$ cp -R bob.extension/bob/extension/data/bob.example.extension ./
$ rm -rf bob.extension # optionally remove the cloned source of bob.extension
$ cd bob.example.extension

Setting up your package

If you would like to generate a Library out of your C++ code, simply add it in the list of ext_modules:

...
# import the Extension and Library classes and the build_ext function from bob.blitz
from bob.blitz.extension import Extension, Library, build_ext
...

setup(

  ext_modules = [
    # declare a pure C/C++ library just the same way as an extension
    Library("bob.example.library.bob_example_library",
      # list of pure C/C++ files compiled into this library
      [
        "bob/example/library/cpp/Function.cpp",
      ],
      version = version,
      bob_packages = bob_packages,
    ),
    # all other extensions will automatically link against the Library defined above
    Extension("bob.example.library._library",
      # list of files compiled into this extension
      [
        # the Python bindings
        "bob/example/library/main.cpp",
      ],
      version = version,
      bob_packages = bob_packages,
    ),
    ... #add more Extensions if you wish
  ],

  cmdclass = {
    'build_ext': build_ext
  },

  ...
)

Again, we use the overloaded library class bob.blitz.extension.Library instead of the bob.extension.Library, but the parameters are identical, and identical to the ones of the bob.extension.Extension. To avoid later complications, you should follow the guidelines for libraries in bob packages:

1. The name of the C++ library need to be identical to the name of your package (replacing the ‘.’ by ‘_’). Also, the package name need to be part of it. For example, to create a library for the bob.example.library package, it should be called bob.example.library.bob_example_library. In this way it is assured that the libraries are found by the bob_packages parameter (see above).
2. All header files that your C++ library should export need to be placed in the directory bob/example/library/include/bob.example.library. Again, this is the default directory, where the bob_packages expect the includes to be. This is also the directory that is added to your own library and to your extensions, so you don’t need to specify that by hand.
3. The include directory should contain a config.h file, which contains C/C++ preprocessor directives that contains the current version of your C/C++ API. With this, we make sure that the version of the library that is linked into other packages is the expected one. One such file is again given in our bob.example.library example.
4. To avoid conflicts with other functions, you should put all your exported C++ functions into an appropriate namespace. In our example, this should be something like bob::example::library.

The newly generated Library will be automatically linked to all other Extensions in the package. No worries, if the library is not used in the extension, the linker should be able to figure that out...

Note

You can also export a library without bindings, for it to be used in other C++/Python packages.

Building your package

As shown above, to compile your C++ Python bindings and the pure C++ libraries, you can follow the simple instructions:

$ buildout
...

This will automatically check out all required bob_packages and compile them locally. Afterwards, the C++ code from this package will be compiled, using a newly created build directory for temporary output. After compilation, this directory can be safely removed (re-compiling will re-create it).

To get the source code compiled using another build directory, you can define a BOB_BUILD_DIRECTORY environment variable, e.g.:

$ BOB_BUILD_DIRECTORY=/tmp/build_bob buildout
...

The C++ code of this package, and the code of all other bob_packages will be compiled using the selected directory. Again, after compilation this directory can be safely removed.

Another environment variable enables parallel compilation of C or C++ code. Use BOB_BUILD_PARALLEL=X (where X is the number of parallel processes you want) to enable parallel building.