libpnicore is the foundation of the PNI library stack. It provides data structures and functions used by all other libraries within the stack. These data structures include

• a set of well defined data types along with utilities around them
• multidimensional arrays
• facilities to quickly implement command line options and arguments for programs
• type erasures for scalar and array objects
• a set of exceptions used by all other libraries

On Linux the following software is required to build the libpnicore

• gcc >= 4.8
• cmake >= 3.5
• doxygen to generate XML API documentation
• sphinx to generate HTML and PDF documentation
• Boost >= 1.60

Acquire the sources either by either cloning this repository or by

$ git clone https://github.com/pni-libraries/libpnicore.git

alternatively you could also download a source tarball from the release site of this project. Once the you have the sources create a build directory and run cmake

$ mkdir libpnicore-build
$ cd libpnicore-build
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/pni ../libpnicore

In the example we have chosen to install the library below /opt/pni. To test build and install the library use

$ make
$ make test
$ make install

libpnicore installs a CMake package file along with its files. So using the library from within CMake is rather simple. Your CMakeLists.txt includes the pnicore package as any other package

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5.0)
project(test_pnicore LANGUAGES CXX C VERSION 0.0.1)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)

find_package(pnicore REQUIRED)

add_executable(test_pnicore test_pnicore.cpp)
target_link_libraries(test_pnicore pnicore_shared)

As we are relying on CMake version higher than 3.3 we can use the imported targets feature. In this case all dependencies required to build and link with libpnicore are automatically pulled in by the pnicore_shared target. Be aware of the CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD variable set to 11 in the above example. This is absolutely mandatory if you want to use libpnicore!

In cases where you have libpnicore installed to locations where cmake is not automatically looking for packages you may have to set the pnicore_DIR variable when calling cmake the first time.

More information can be found at online documentation.

Changes for a specific version of libpnicore can be found at CHANGELOG.