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2025-02

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@Pagghiu Pagghiu released this 28 Feb 21:30
· 6 commits to main since this release
release/2025/02
f9da0f7

February 2025 Update Blog Post

Containers

Re-writing Containers...what could be going wrong?

Sane C++ Libraries tag-line is "Platform Abstraction Libraries".
The main reason for that is that the project doesn't try or want to be a STL replacement.
There is an hard requirement not to depend on the Standard C++ Library because the standard totally disrespects one of the fundamental pillars of the project, namely Fast Compile Times.

In general STL-like containers may not be the best or most efficient abstraction in many cases.
Using them (or not) it's really an application choice that should not dictated by a Platform Abstraction library.

A lot of effort is often spent avoiding or at least reducing Containers usage in other Sane C++ Libraries API.
The problem is that Vector<T> containers were used both by Strings library and just as Buffers for File and other libraries.

For this reason I've decided to re-write the entire set of Containers with a few objectives

  1. Cleaning-up the quite messy and verbose code for Vector<T> and SmallVector<T> and Array<T,N>
  2. Provide a base implementation that works for char buffers but concise enough to be included in Foundations library.
  3. Share as much code as possible to implement Vector<T> and SmallVector<T> that are still in Containers
  4. Create a byte buffer implementation that should not leak in the headers

The results are quite satisfying, there is now a Buffer and SmallBuffer<N> that replace all Vector<char> usages and are implemented in Foundation.cpp file.
All the other Vector-like containers share most of the code and they're delivered as header only library as one can expect from a templated library.

Probably a next step could be evolving them to use custom memory allocators and arenas, but that will happen maybe in some future update.

This is the detailed list of commits:

An these are the commits were some dependencies from Containers have been removed

SC::Foundation

Changes in SC::Foundation are connected to the ones just described in Containers, because Segment class and Buffer plus SmallBuffer are all defined there.
Two classes, specifically TaggedUnion and TaggedMap have been moved to SC::FoundationExtra.
The reason is that they're not used by any other library and feel a little bit too Modern C++ to deserve a place in Sane C++ Libraries.

SC::Build

SC::Build is the self-hosted build system used by Sane C++ Libraries to generate test and example projects.
It's not needed to use the libraries, as they need no build system at all, but it's used when developing the libraries.

It's not ready for general use (yet!), but it's progressing towards getting there someday.

In this month the build definition API has been cleaned up a little bit, with preference towards using methods to configure the build rather than filling the data structure.

A new more precise flags resolution / merging system properly allows to override compile or link flags in configuration, so that they have priority over the ones set per-project.
It's also possible to set a compile flags for a specific set of files, including disabling warnings for them.

Result buildTestProject(const Parameters& parameters, Project& project)
{
    project = {TargetType::ConsoleExecutable, TEST_PROJECT_NAME};

    // All relative paths are evaluated from this project root directory.
    project.setRootDirectory(parameters.directories.libraryDirectory.view());

    // Project Configurations
    project.addPresetConfiguration(Configuration::Preset::Debug, parameters);
    project.addPresetConfiguration(Configuration::Preset::Release, parameters);
    project.addPresetConfiguration(Configuration::Preset::DebugCoverage, parameters);

    // Defines
    // $(PROJECT_ROOT) expands to Project::setRootDirectory expressed relative to $(PROJECT_DIR)
    project.addDefines({"SC_LIBRARY_PATH=$(PROJECT_ROOT)", "SC_COMPILER_ENABLE_CONFIG=1"});

    // Includes
    project.addIncludePaths({
        ".",            // Libraries path (for PluginTest)
        "Tests/SCTest", // SCConfig.h path (enabled by SC_COMPILER_ENABLE_CONFIG == 1)
    });

    addSaneCppLibraries(project, parameters);
    project.addFiles("Tests/SCTest", "*.cpp"); // add all .cpp from SCTest directory
    project.addFiles("Tests/SCTest", "*.h");   // add all .h from SCTest directory
    project.addFiles("Tools", "SC-*.cpp");     // add all tools
    project.addFiles("Tools", "*.h");          // add tools headers
    project.addFiles("Tools", "*Test.cpp");    // add tools tests

    // This is a totally useless per-file define to test "per-file" flags SC::Build feature.
    SourceFiles specificFiles;
    // For testing purposes let's create a needlessly complex selection filter for "SC Spaces.cpp"
    specificFiles.addSelection("Tests/SCTest", "*.cpp");
    specificFiles.removeSelection("Tests/SCTest", "SCTest.cpp");
    // Add an useless define to be checked inside "SC Spaces.cpp" and "SCTest.cpp"
    specificFiles.compile.addDefines({"SC_SPACES_SPECIFIC_DEFINE=1"});
    specificFiles.compile.addIncludePaths({"../Directory With Spaces"});

    // For testing purposes disable some warnings caused in "SC Spaces.cpp"
    specificFiles.compile.disableWarnings({4100});                                 // MSVC only
    specificFiles.compile.disableWarnings({"unused-parameter"});                   // GCC and Clang
    specificFiles.compile.disableClangWarnings({"reserved-user-defined-literal"}); // Clang Only
    project.addSpecificFileFlags(specificFiles);

    return Result(true);
}

This is the detailed list of commits:

Minor Changes

And as always here is the list of random fixes scattered around the library!

This is the detailed list of commits for all minor changes:

Full Changelog: release/2025/01...release/2025/02

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