verri/cool

Common standalone C++ utilities

Cool

Common standalone C++11 utilities.

Cool is a collection of self-contained headers that provide convenient utilities missing in the standard library.

Unlike Boost, Cool's utilities are not meant to be "usable across a broad spectrum of applications". Instead, each header brings a zero-configuration solution to common problems. As a result, Cool is not as configurable as Boost, however, it intends to be much easier to use.

Each header file contains a utility:

• cool/ccreate.hpp: wrapper to deal with legacy C data types that need to be created and destroyed.
• cool/colony.hpp: simplified and didactic version of std::colony.
• cool/channel.hpp: Go-like channels.
• cool/compose.hpp: lambda composition (C++17 and above only).
• cool/defer.hpp: deferred execution of statements.
• cool/enum_map.hpp: enumeration map (C++17 and above only).
• cool/indices.hpp: utility to provide safer for loops.
• cool/thread_pool.hpp: Pool of threads with queueable jobs.

Installation

Recommended: Local Git Submodule

The recommended installation of the library is including it as a submodule of your Git project.

In your project, do

$ git submodule add https://github.com/verri/cool.git external/cool

Local copy

Download the latest release and unzip it.

System-wide installation

System-wide installation is recommended only if you are sure about what you doing.

Clone the repository.

$ git clone https://github.com/verri/cool.git
$ cd cool

Install via CMake 3.0+.

$ cmake -H. -Bbuild
$ cmake --build build
$ cmake --install build

Usage and Compilation

Cool is a header-only library, so you just need to instruct the compiler its location. Some headers, however, use threads, e.g. channel and thread_pool. Thus, you will probably need to link a thread library as well.

Recommended: CMake 3.0+

If you installed the library as a submodule, include the following line in your CMakeLists.txt

add_subdirectory(external/cool)
find_package(Threads REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(my-target PRIVATE cool ${CMAKE_THREAD_LIBS_INIT})

If you installed system-wide, use

find_package(Cool REQUIRED)
find_package(Threads REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(my-target PRIVATE ${Cool_LIBRARY} ${CMAKE_THREAD_LIBS_INIT})

Compiler flags

You can directly specify the compiler flags:

$ $CXX -I/path/to/cool/include -std=c++11 -pthreads ...

Documentation

An incomplete API reference is available here.

Given the simplicity of the libraries, usage examples should suffice.

• cool::ccreate
• cool::colony
• cool::channel
• cool::compose
• cool::defer
• cool::enum_map
• cool::indices
• cool::thread_pool

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by FAPESP as part of the project "High level data classification based on complex network applied to invariant pattern recognition" (Grant number 2013/25876-6).

cool's Issues

cool::index_iterator and cool::index_range should be 100% constexpr and noexcept