The createProject software creates a barebone boiler-plate directory for a small to medium-sized C++ project on Unix-like systems, particularly GNU/Linux.

The createProject software is installed per-user and can't be installed globally.

1. Install gcc, cmake, git, and g++: (on Debian and derivatives) apt install gcc cmake git g++
2. cd to your home directory: cd ~
3. clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/sethvan/createProject.git
4. cd into the cloned repo: cd createProject
5. run the build script: ./build

• (Note: Presently, the ./build command only just creates a symlink on your PATH at ~/.local/bin/create-project, though this will be expanded in the future.)

Additionally, if ~/.local/bin/create-project isn't on your local user's PATH, then you will have to add this to ~/.profile:

# Append this to the bottom of your ~/.profile script

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/.local/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
fi

After adding the above text to your ~/.profile, you will either need to close and reopen your terminal or run the command export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH" to temporarily fix your session.

Run create-project <name of project> in a terminal opened/cd-ed to directory inside where you wish to create project:

• create-project <name of project>
  • Creates a directory named <name of project> in your current working directory.
  • Copies all the template files to this directory to set things up for you.
  • If you use VS Code and would like the project to be opened there upon creation then just un-comment out the bottom line in the create-project script.
    • (Note: the create-project script can be located by running the command command -v create-project)

Example resulting file structure from cd /home/user/code/ && create-project code-as-images:

• /home/user/code/code-as-images: project directory.
• /home/user/code/code-as-images/include directory for .h files.
• /home/user/code/code-as-images/res directory for resource files.
• /home/user/code/code-as-images/build directory for CMake-generated files.
• /home/user/code/code-as-images/src directory for .cpp files, containing a Hello World main.cpp file to start with.
• /home/user/code/code-as-images/CMakeLists.txt file set to C++17, many warning flags and an address sanitizer.
• /home/user/code/code-as-images/run script that is used to call CMake to compile project and then send the execution file to top of project directory where it is ran.
• /home/user/code/code-as-images/createclass script that is used to create basic boilerplate for class .h file, create a .cpp file and add path of .cpp file to CMakeLists.txt.

The following video demonstrates me running the create-project command on my Linux Mint 20 laptop.

• Unless you modify the CMakeLists.txt, you will need a compiler that can handle C++17 minimum and your CMake needs to be a minimum version of 3.16 .

• There are some further notes in the script files if you view them, I would also recommend viewing the createclass script before attempting to run it.

• I may make this more extendible but there are also already many CMake boiler-plate apps currently available and most users should probably already be working on learning how to fill in and modify the CMake fields that are currently just being provided here as they are. So we will see. It was in most part a small and very rewarding learning project for shell scripting.