Compiling C++ modules

Previous: Using and writing loadable modules

We showed you in the previous example how to write a simple native module, but we failed to mention exactly how to compile it. If you use CMake, its not all that hard:

# Place this in CMakeLists.txt
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.6.4)
execute_process( COMMAND flusspferd --cmake OUTPUT_VARIABLE hippo_cmake)
include("${hippo_cmake}")

FILE(GLOB_RECURSE sources 
     "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/src/*.cpp" 
     "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/src/*.hpp")

add_definitions("-Wall")
flusspferd_plugin( "dummy_module" SOURCES ${sources})

Note:

You can find this module in help/examples/dummy_module.cmake.

Simple create a file called CMakeLists.txt containing the above and place it in your the directory of your project. Don't forget to correct the list of source files appropriately. If you also need to install .js files to go with the native module, you can pass a list of files in the JS named argument to flusspferd_plugin.

Then simply configure and make it using CMake - it will get installed to the right place automatically.

The output should look something like this:

$ cmake .
...
-- 
--  Installing into /Users/ash/.flusspferd/modules
-- 
-- Bulding dummy-module plugin
-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: /Users/ash/code/js/dummy-module
$ make install
Scanning dependencies of target dummy-module_PLUGIN
[ 1%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/dummy-module_PLUGIN.dir/src/dummy-module.cpp.o
...

Thats all there is to it. The module will automatically be installed into the right directory by make install.