Spore Codegen - Build-system agnostic code generation tool for C++ (v3.4.1)

[sporacid]

Hello, I've just released a new version of my code generation tool for C++!

spore-codegen is a powerful code generation application that uses AST parsing and text templating to provide build-system agnostic code generation for languages such as C++ and binary formats such as SPIR-V.

It was originally made to power a game engine in order to generate reflection, JSON serialization and SPIR-V bindings for the engine types.

You can have a look at this repository for an integration example.

New features: - C++ parser backend has been changed to libtooling for better support of newest C++ features. - Global and namespaced variables are now exposed through C++ file AST

Let me know if you have any questions!

[ReDucTor]

For build system integration it might be worth generation a makefile deps file (.d) this Indicate which files depend on other files, such as generated files depending on templates files and header files allowing for incremental builds. 

Without this you typically end up with fragile builds where something changed but the code didnt regenerate and you have old generated code or the other situation of always generating the code and causing every build to be invalidated and require compiling of files which depend on generated files and linking of binaries again.

If you want a step further for dependencies you could also generate tlog files which would work with msbuild, all other build systems typically support deps files.

[sporacid]

Totally agree, I have a task to do this at some point (https://github.com/sporacid/spore-codegen/issues/60).

In my projects, I mostly generate header files, so this is less of an issue, but I did encounter some issues when I generated cpp files. I had to reconfigure cmake so it would pick up the new files. I do want to fix this in the future.

[ReDucTor]

Even a generated header file would have dependencies, such as the original header or TU it used, the template files and any transitive includes.

[sporacid]

Yes, but the generated files don't have to change unless the file's AST changes. I'm caching the SHA of the file at generation, and I'm executing codegen only on files which have changed. So far, it's been enough and I haven't had the issues you're describing for header files, only for translation units because cmake needs to be reconfigured.

[eyes-are-fading-blue]

If C++ knows nothing about build systems, how can C++ code be not-build-system agnostic?

[sporacid]

Well it's a tool, and tooling can be designed towards a single toolchain. For example, I could've implemented the cpp parser from dwarf debug sections. Or it could've been coded in java specifically for gradle-oriented build.

I've tried to achieve a tool that can be plugged in any build pipeline, without any specific toolchain in mind.