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Utility Headers for C++

Maintained at https://github.com/rpavlik/util-headers

Even when using the STL and libraries of best practices (like Boost, Eigen, and Loki), a C++ coder sometimes requires utility functionality that can be relatively neatly developed and tested in isolation. Rather than give each small header its own project, we collected such utility functionality, along with associated tests, in this project.

The headers in util/ provide small nuggets of functionality. The headers are effectively independent, for the most part: you can use one or all of them, without worrying about dependencies.

(Some exceptions apply, such as BlockingInvokeFunctor and its implementation(s), which depend on each other but which should be self-explanatory.)

Most, particularly the older ones, are C++98, while newer ones may use C++11/14/17 features.

Namespaces

Everything that is intended to be "public" is in the util namespace. Code in util::detail is considered to be "implementation details" and not necessarily for direct use.

Building

Since these are only headers, a build system isn't strictly necessary: just include them in your project. The build system included in this repository (uses CMake to generate makefiles or project files) does five things:

  • provides an install target that stamps git revisions on each header.
  • provides a way to easily edit the headers in a project-oriented IDE
  • provides a doc target that runs Doxygen
  • verifies that each header can cleanly build in a translation unit of its own
  • builds unit tests (and allows running them easily with CTest)

The following dependencies are all optional, but their presence will enable whatever testing exists in the build system for the associated headers:

  • Boost:

    • boost::test required to build unit tests

    • boost::function headers required by util/BlockingInvokeFunctor*.h

  • Eigen: header-only library (snapshot included in repository), used by:

    • util/EigenTie.h

    • util/Saturate.h

  • GMTL: header-only library (often used with VR Juggler) used by:

    • gmtlToOsgMatrix.h

  • OpenSceneGraph: used by:

    • gmtlToOsgMatrix.h

    • osgFindNamedNode.h

  • VPR (part of VR Juggler) used by:

    • util/BlockingInvokeFunctorVPR.h

Search Tool

Include guards in this project take a very specific pattern that includes a GUID/UUID, both for optimal collision avoidance and for the bonus ability to recognize even renamed files. The util_header_search_tool.sh (requires something unix-like, Git Bash will work on Windows) takes advantage of this.

The tool can be useful to find which headers might need to be updated from this "upstream" repo.

  • Run with --update (after adding a new header) to parse headers and generate the guid.list.txt and guid.transforms.txt data files, used by the normal/search operating mode of the script.
  • Running with any other arguments will lead to those arguments being treated as input files passed to a pipeline starting with grep, that will output the name of any util-headers file found (and its original name in this repo)

Licenses

The headers in util/ are free and open-source software. They may be distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0; see individual files for copyright notices.

A few headers extend Eigen, which is bundled in the third-party directory for testing purposes. It has its own license.

A copy of the Loki library is bundled in the third-party directory. It has its own license.

Some headers extend or interact with other libraries. Each of these libraries is of course governed by its own license.

Acknowledgement

If you find this useful, we would appreciate hearing from you - a GitHub issue will do, as the primary author (Ryan Pavlik) is no longer in academia and thus no longer needs publication copies (though they'd certainly be appreciated).