The nx_kit library

// Copyright 2018-present Network Optix, Inc. Licensed under MPL 2.0: www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/

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Introduction

The nx_kit is a kit of pure C99/C++11 platform-agnostic utilities useful for experimenting and debugging.

This kit does not use any non-standard libraries. There is a mention of the Qt library, but only conditional: if Qt is used by a project which uses nx_kit, additional convenience (e.g. supporting certain Qt types in debug utilities) is provided. Similarly, while being fully cross-platform, if nx_kit detects one of the familiar platforms, additional convenience or customized behavior is offered.

Currently, the following units are included into nx_kit:

• nx::kit::IniConfig - nx/kit/ini_config.h A mechanism for configuration variables that can alter the behavior of the code for the purpose of debugging and experimenting, with insignificant performance overhead. The default (initial) values are defined in the code and lead to the nominal behavior, which can be overridden by creating ini files (with name=value lines) in the system temp directory (or /sdcard on Android).

• nx::kit::debug - nx/kit/debug.h Utilities for debugging: measuring execution time and FPS, logging values and messages, etc.

• nx::kit::test - nx/kit/test.h A rudimentary standalone unit testing framework designed to mimic Google Test to a certain degree. Used for the unit tests for ini_config, debug and utils units of nx_kit.

• nx::kit::utils - nx/kit/utils.h Simple utilities used by other nx_kit units.

• nx::kit::Json - nx/kit/json11.h Json parser/writer "Json11" originally written by DropBox: https://github.com/dropbox/json11 Its source code (without additional unneeded files) is located unchanged in nx_kit/src/json11, but should be used via nx/kit/json11.h wrapper which puts class Json into namespace nx::kit and makes it exported from nx_kit dynamic library.

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Building

This kit is suitable to form a source-only artifact nx_kit with the only src folder in it - the source code files will be compiled as part of the project that uses the artifact. For the CMake users, CMakeLists.txt can also be deployed to the artifact to be used in add_subdirectory().

All classes and functions in this kit are prefixed with NX_KIT_API macro which allows to control symbol visibility if compiled as a dynamic library. See its usage in CMakeLists.txt for details.

Tests for these utils are located in the unit_tests folder. The test project can be built and run on Linux using cmake/ctest, on Windows with Cygwin using cmake/ctest or CLion IDE, or on Windows using Microsoft Visual Studio 2012+.

For convenience and as an example, there are scripts named build.bat and build.sh. These scripts build and run nx_kit library and its unit tests for Windows and Linux (or Windows + Cygwin / MinGW / Git Bash), respectively. They serve as wrappers around the standard CMake build procedure, including the generation stage, building and running ctest.

Prerequisites:

- CMake >= 3.14
- Windows (7, 10 or 11): Microsoft Visual Studio >= 2012
- Linux (Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, 22.04)
    - g++ >= 7.5
    - make or Ninja

Please note that on the Windows platform, if you use one of the provided scripts, you should also have Ninja installed as part of Microsoft Visual Studio. Additionally, if build.bat is executed within the nx repository directory, it attempts to initialize the environment under the assumption that the Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 Community edition is being used. If any of these conditions (MSVC version or nx_kit directory placement) are not met, the build must be initiated from an already initialized environment (e.g., the "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022" for MSVC 2022, or its equivalent for the MSVC version installed on your machine).

To view the possible command-line options of the scripts, run them with -h or /?.