Compilation instructions for languages that require it

[leios]

Feature Request

Description

It would be a good idea to have compilation instructions available for languages that require them. For example, C / C++ could have a makefile and rust could have a cargo.toml file available. I had some trouble getting the #686 working, and this might help.

There are a large number of existing implementations that could benefit from this.

For Algorithm Archive Developers

• This feature can be added to the Master Overview (if it cannot be, explain why in a comment below -- lack of technical expertise, not relevant to the scope of this project, too ambitious)
• There is a timeline for when this feature can be implemented
• The feature has been added to the Master Overview
• The feature has been implemented (Please link the PR)

[leios]

myusernamefrank from twitch chat said:

sometimes other books or tutorials have a general build environment for all examples, maybe might be a good idea if it is one big project for each language which can be just compiled and generates all binaries?

[jiegillet]

I'm with myusernamefrank, one example should do it, something trivial in the code itself (hello world) but non-trivial in the structure ( import a few libraries...).

[leios]

So to be clear: You guys would prefer a single chapter on compilation where we explain the process for each language used in the AAA?

I think this is a good idea and would save some headache in the future. I don't know if we also need local build configuration as well?

[jdonszelmann]

Instructions globally are fine, but we need some part of it locally as well. For example, some of the code in the archive uses libraries (such as for Rust: generating random numbers). It's useful to have some instructions on which libraries to load locally. In the case of rust, this is a Cargo.toml file (and a small project structure). In the case of c, maybe a makefile? For Javascript maybe a package.json etc.

[leios]

Including the Cargo.toml file, Julia files should probably all have a Project / Manifest available so users can load everything with just julia --project

[ShadowMitia]

Maybe for C/C++ we could have some script files? A combination of "build.sh" and "build.bat", to make it easily cross platform, and not have to depend on too many third parties? Makefiles don't work out of the box on Windows, and things like CMake are a pain to setup and manage.

This could apply to other languages as well, but in C/C++ it would be a good practice to encourage enabling more warnings, to detect more bugs.

For example in C++ I use all of these:

-Wall -Wextra -Wshadow -Wnon-virtual-dtor -Wold-style-cast -Wcast-align -Wunused -Woverloaded-virtual -Wpedantic -Wconversion -Wsign-conversion -Wnull-dereference -Wdouble-promotion -Wformat=2

[Amaras]

Talking about Make and CMake, maybe we could use SCons. (I'll add the link once I'm on my PC again)
I'm not entirely sure it is completely cross-platform in all cases, but I think it's close enough in all the common cases, which is what the AAA mostly needs.

I agree with the additional warnings, in any case.

[leios]

I would lean towards Make and CMake because it's what I know; however, I also agree that they might not be the right tools for this job. Why is CMake hard to set up? Isn't it just install and go?

If everyone prefers SCons, I am happy to use that as well!

[ShadowMitia]

I guess it depends at what level everything is used. CMake is kinda verbose, so for small projects it's a bit annoying to use. But in this case it's probably worth it, and would be easily cross-platform.

I use this repo as a reference for CMake https://github.com/lefticus/cpp_starter_project,

It's got a CMakeLists.txt and then inside the cmake folder, there are more files to help manage CMake. For a 50 line project, it feels very overkill 😂 But I also like being minimalistic (and perhaps too much). Not everything needs to be kept, but something simpler would be better I think.

Although now that I think about it, providing project templates could be a way to manage this.

[Amaras]

I don't know CMake at all, so I'm not able to provide some perspective on it.
I know SCons was developed as an alternative to the Make/CMake combo, so that's something to take into account.

Of course, requiring a Makefile or CMake file could create a barrier of entry for beginner, which I think SCons could (maybe) attenuate, assuming we provide sufficient infrastructure to support this (and CMake has the same problem, of course).