Quick Start

This guide shows three small ways to consume an installed libscid release: direct g++, a simple Makefile, and CMake.

The examples use a local installation directory named install/libscid. See Installation if libscid is not installed yet.

Example Program

Create main.cpp:

#include <scid/core/position.h>
 
#include <iostream>
 
int main()
{
    const auto& position = scid::core::Position::getStdStart();
 
    if( !position.IsStdStart() ) {
        return 1;
    }
 
    std::cout << "libscid is available\n";
    return 0;
}

This program uses only Core, so it links only LibScidCpp::Core in CMake or libscid_core when compiling directly.

With g++

g++ -std=c++20 \
    -I install/libscid/include \
    main.cpp \
    -L install/libscid/lib \
    -lscid_core \
    -o libscid-hello
 
./libscid-hello

For a non-standard install prefix, replace install/libscid with the directory where the release archive was extracted or where cmake --install installed the library.

When linking additional libraries directly, keep dependent libraries before their dependencies:

# Database also needs Core and threads.
g++ -std=c++20 -I install/libscid/include main.cpp \
    -L install/libscid/lib \
    -lscid_database -lscid_core -pthread \
    -o app
 
# ECO needs Core.
g++ -std=c++20 -I install/libscid/include main.cpp \
    -L install/libscid/lib \
    -lscid_eco -lscid_core \
    -o app
 
# Spelling needs Database, Core and threads.
g++ -std=c++20 -I install/libscid/include main.cpp \
    -L install/libscid/lib \
    -lscid_spelling -lscid_database -lscid_core -pthread \
    -o app

Prefer CMake for larger consumers: the exported targets carry include directories, transitive libscid dependencies and thread linkage.

With Make

Create Makefile:

CXX ?= g++
LIBSCID_PREFIX ?= install/libscid
 
CXXFLAGS += -std=c++20 -I$(LIBSCID_PREFIX)/include
LDFLAGS += -L$(LIBSCID_PREFIX)/lib
LDLIBS += -lscid_core
 
libscid-hello: main.cpp
    $(CXX) $(CXXFLAGS) $< $(LDFLAGS) $(LDLIBS) -o $@
 
.PHONY: clean
clean:
    rm -f libscid-hello

Build and run:

make
./libscid-hello

Use make LIBSCID_PREFIX=/path/to/libscid if libscid is installed somewhere else.

With CMake

Create CMakeLists.txt:

cmake_minimum_required( VERSION 3.23 )
 
project( libscid-hello LANGUAGES CXX )
 
find_package( libscid-cpp CONFIG REQUIRED )
 
add_executable( libscid-hello main.cpp )
target_compile_features( libscid-hello PRIVATE cxx_std_20 )
set_target_properties( libscid-hello PROPERTIES CXX_EXTENSIONS OFF )
target_link_libraries( libscid-hello PRIVATE LibScidCpp::Core )

Configure, build and run:

cmake -S . -B _build -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=install/libscid
cmake --build _build
./_build/libscid-hello

Link the target that matches the API surface you use:

target_link_libraries( app PRIVATE LibScidCpp::Core )
target_link_libraries( app PRIVATE LibScidCpp::Database )
target_link_libraries( app PRIVATE LibScidCpp::Eco )
target_link_libraries( app PRIVATE LibScidCpp::Spelling )

LibScidCpp::Database, LibScidCpp::Eco and LibScidCpp::Spelling bring their libscid dependencies transitively.