Installation¶

You can embed the amalgamation source files in your projects, add Argtable3 as a dependency in the vcpkg manifest, install Argtable3 as a system-wide CMake package, or build the library from release archives.

Embed Amalgamation Source Files¶

Note

We no longer provide the amalgamation source files (argtable3.c and argtable3.h) in the repository. You can get the amalgamation distribution either from the release page (argtable-<version>-amalgamation.(zip|tar.gz)), or generate the distribution yourself by using the generator under the tools directory:

Navigate to the tools directory.
Run ./build dist, which will generate the distribution under the <ROOT>/dist directory.

Add argtable3.c and argtable3.h from the amalgamation distribution to your projects. This is the simplest and recommended way to use Argtable3: it not only removes the hassle of building the library, but also allows compilers to do better inter-procedure optimization.

Install for a Single Project with vcpkg Manifest¶

vcpkg is an open source C/C++ package manager based on CMake, and it supports certain stable releases of Argtable3. To add the library to your CMake project, it’s recommended to add vcpkg as a submodule to your project repo and use it to manage project dependencies. All libraries installed in this way can only be consumed by the project and won’t impact other projects in the system.

If your project is under D:/projects/demo and the vcpkg submodule is under D:/projects/demo/deps/vcpkg, first you need to add Argtable3 to the manifest, D:/projects/demo/vcpkg.json:

{
    "name": "demo",
    "version": "0.0.1",
    "dependencies": [
        {
            "name": "argtable3",
            "version>=": "3.2.1"
        }
    ],
    "builtin-baseline": "92b42c4c680defe94f1665a847d04ded890f372e"
}

To add Argtable3 to your CMake scripts, you need to integrate the local vcpkg to CMake by setting the CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE variable. You also need to link to the static VC runtime (/MT or /MTd) if you want to use the static library version of Argtable3:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.18)

set(CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/deps/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake
  CACHE STRING "Vcpkg toolchain file")

project(versionstest)

add_executable(main main.cpp)

find_package(Argtable3 CONFIG REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(main PRIVATE argtable3::argtable3)

if(VCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET STREQUAL "x64-windows-static")
  set_property(TARGET main PROPERTY MSVC_RUNTIME_LIBRARY "MultiThreaded$<$<CONFIG:Debug>:Debug>")
endif()

Now you can run cmake to install Argtable3, configure and generate build scripts, and build the project:

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake .. -DVCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET=x64-windows-static
$ cmake --build .

Install for All Projects with vcpkg¶

If you want to make Argtable3 available for all projects in the system, you can clone vcpkg to any directory and install packages there. Assuming vcpkg has been cloned in D:/dev/vcpkg and the directory has been added to PATH, you can install the static library version of Argtable3 in D:/dev/vcpkg/installed:

$ vcpkg install argtable3:x64-windows-static

Since each developer may clone vcpkg in a different place, it may not be appropriate to specify the CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE variable in CMakeLists.txt. Therefore, you should remove setting the CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE variable in the CMakeLists.txt example above, and set the variable in the command line:

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake .. -DVCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET=x64-windows-static -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=D:/dev/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake
$ cmake --build .

Build from Release Archives or Source¶

If none of the methods above suits your needs, or if you want to help developing Argtable3, you can always build from archives on the release page or from the repository.

If you use GCC (Linux, MacOSX, MinGW, Cygwin), run:
```
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
$ make
$ make test
```
Makefile-based generators in CMake only support one configuration at a time, so you need to specify CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to Debug, Release, MinSizeRel, or RelWithDebInfo. To build multiple configurations, you need to create a build directory for each configuraiton.

Since v3.2.1, CMake scripts will check BUILD_SHARED_LIBS and build either the static library or the dynamic library at a time. BUILD_SHARED_LIBS is OFF by default, so if you want to build the dynamic library, you have to set BUILD_SHARED_LIBS to ON explicitly:
```
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON ..
```
To cleanup, run make clean or remove the build directory:
```
$ rm -rf build
```
If you use Microsoft Visual C++ compiler, run:
```
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64" ..
$ cmake --build . --config Debug
$ ctest -C Debug
```
You can also use Visual Studio 2017 IDE to open the generated solution. To cleanup, just remove the build directory.

To build a tagged version, go to the project root directory, and use the Makefile in the project root folder to check out the specified version:

$ make taglist
Available TAGs:
v3.1.1.432a160
$ make co TAG=v3.1.1.432a160
$ cd .tags/v3.1.1.432a160
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make
$ make test

You will find the shared library (or Windows DLL), static library, and the amalgamation distribution under the build directory.