Building Ponder

These are some notes on how to build Ponder. It is assumed that you have some knowledge of CMake. If not, perhaps look at the tutorial, or search for tutorial resources, of which there are many.

Get Ponder

You can clone or download Ponder via the Ponder project page. E.g.

git clone https://github.com/billyquith/ponder.git

Compiler Notes

Ponder requires a C++ compiler that handles a minimum of C++17. These are some notes on compilers used in testing:

• Compiler C++ compatibility notes.
• Clang has full support for C++17 since version 4.
• GCC has good C++17 support from version 7 onwards.
• Apple Xcode:
  • Apple Clang is a modified version of Clang with different version numbers.
  • Version information
  • Versions since Xcode 9.2 should work.
• Microsoft MSVC 2017 & 2019 32/64 bit - supported
  • MSVC started to have full C++17 support in 2019. Please prefer this version.
  • Best to use the most recent patched version.

Generate Build Files

Ponder uses cmake to generate project files. As you would normally do, create a build directory and generate your project files:

cd ponder
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" ..
make

Build Options

There are various options you can pass to cmake to turn on optional features. These are processed in cmake/Config.cmake.

Features:

• USES_LUA:BOOL - turns Lua binding support on. See ponder::lua.

Tests:

• BUILD_TEST - includes the unit tests. You might use this for reference.
• BUILD_TEST_LUA:BOOL - turns Lua testing on. You might want to build this to ensure your project is set up correctly if USES_LUA is on.
• BUILD_TEST_EXAMPLES:BOOL - includes the examples used in the documentation.

Options:

• BUILD_SHARED_LIBS:BOOL - builds Ponder as a shared library.
  • Only really applicable to Windows for making DLLs.
• CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING - sets the build configuration. This defaults to "RelWithDebInfo".

E.g.

cmake .. \
    -G "Unix Makefiles" \
    -D BUILD_TEST=TRUE      # include unit tests \
    -D USES_LUA=TRUE        # turn on Lua support \
    -D BUILD_TEST_LUA=TRUE  # include Lua tests

Using Ponder

You can include and link to Ponder as you would a normal library. Please note if you install Ponder there is a FindPonder.cmake module in the cmake directory which allows you to find and configure Ponder from your client project.