Chapter07

Software Architecture with C++, Second Edition

Software Architecture with C++: Designing Robust C++ Systems with Modern Architectural Practices, Second Edition, published by Packt

Chapter 7: Building and Packaging

Prerequisites

Install the following software:

• CMake 3.28
• Conan 2
• GCC 15, Clang 20, MSVC 19.50

For optional packaging with CPack:

• dpkg build tools: dh_make and dpkg-buildpackage to assemble DEB packages
• rpm build tools: rpmbuild to assemble RPM packages
• linuxdeploy to assemble AppImages

The C++ compiler in your IDE and the Conan profile must be compatible to compile examples from the IDE.

Assuming you're on Linux or using WSL. The examples are developed on Linux, but their compilation and functionality are also tested on macOS and Windows.

Configure a local Conan profile and remotes by running:

rm -rf ./build/
conan profile detect --name ./build/conan_profile

Make sure that the profile section [settings] contains:

arch=x86_64
compiler=gcc
compiler.libcxx=libstdc++11
compiler.version=15
os=Linux

Building

To build the project, configure the Conan profile as described above, cd to its directory, and then run:

cd build
conan install .. --build=missing -s build_type=Release -pr:a=./conan_profile -of .
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release # build type must match Conan's
cmake --build .

If GCC 15 is not your default compiler, you can tell CMake to use it with the CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER flag:

cd build
conan install .. --build=missing -s build_type=Release -pr:a=./conan_profile -of .
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=`which g++-15` # build type must match Conan's
cmake --build .

To pass the settings directly without a Conan profile, use the command line option --settings:all or -s:a, and the keys arch, build_type, compiler, compiler.cppstd, compiler.libcxx, compiler.version, os:

rm -rf ./build/ && mkdir build && cd build
conan install .. --build=missing -s:a build_type=Release -s:a compiler=gcc -of .
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release # build type must match Conan's
cmake --build .

To apply Conan dependency as a CMake Dependency Provider, clone this Git repository and then run the next command:

rm -rf ./build/cmake-conan
git clone https://github.com/conan-io/cmake-conan.git build/cmake-conan

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_PROJECT_TOP_LEVEL_INCLUDES=./build/cmake-conan/conan_provider.cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build

Testing

To run tests from each of the projects, cd into their respective build directory, and then simply run ctest.

Installing

In the build directory, run cmake --install . to install the software into ${CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH}. If no prefix is given, it will install system-wide. To change this, add -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/path/to/install/to to your cmake invocation.

Packaging

In the build directory, run cpack. Simple as that. Assuming you're running on a system supporting DEB and RPM packages, you'll get a .tar.gz file, a .zip file, a .deb and .rpm packages, and an AppImage executable.

Troubleshooting

Windows Firewall can block connections to the IP address 0.0.0.0 therefore set 127.0.0.1 in customer/src/customer/main.cpp as a workaround or allow connections to that address on the host.

AppImages require FUSE. Package building may fail due to Linux application security systems such as AppArmor and SELinux. fusermount3 mounts and unmount FUSE filesystems in userspace. This happened after the release of Ubuntu 25.10, where Flatpak packages stopped working.

Temporary workaround to be able to use Flatpak on 25.10 is to disable the Apparmor profile for fusermount3:

sudo ln -s /etc/apparmor.d/fusermount3 /etc/apparmor.d/disable/
sudo apparmor_parser -R /etc/apparmor.d/fusermount3

To later re-enable the profile:

$ sudo rm /etc/apparmor.d/disable/fusermount3
$ cat /etc/apparmor.d/fusermount3 | sudo apparmor_parser -a