How to initialize new C++ executable project using conan 1.x

Important note: This post is for Conan 1.x and is not compatible with the current version conan 2.x! See How to initialize C++ project using conan 2.x for an updated version of this post!

In the directory where you want to create the project, run (obviously, replace mypackageby the name of everywhere in our code!)

conan new mypackage/1.0.0 -s

-s is important here. It tells conan that the source is available in the project directory and it should not be pulled using git etc.

This will initialize a shared library project, which we will now modify to build an executable.

First, open src/CMakeLists.txt and change add_library() to add_executable(), for example

add_library(mypackage mypackage.cpp)

to

add_executable(mypackage mypackage.cpp)

Now we shall modify conanfile.py to properly build & install the executable:

    def package(self):
        self.copy("*.h", dst="include", src="src")
        self.copy("*.lib", dst="lib", keep_path=False)
        self.copy("*.dll", dst="bin", keep_path=False)
        self.copy("*.dylib*", dst="lib", keep_path=False)
        self.copy("*.so", dst="lib", keep_path=False)
        self.copy("*.a", dst="lib", keep_path=False)
    def package_info(self):
        self.cpp_info.libs = ["NoxecoDB"]

with

    def package(self):
        self.copy("mypackage", src="bin", dst="bin", keep_path=False)

    def package_info(self):
        self.env_info.PATH = os.path.join(self.package_folder, "bin")

    def deploy(self):
        self.copy("mypackage", dst="bin", src="bin")

and add

import os.path

to the top of the file

Now let’s add a main() function to  src/mypackage.cpp. Replace the file’s content with

#include <iostream>

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    std::cout << "Hello World!" <<std::endl;
}

Now it’s time to install the dependencies & build the project using

conan install . && conan build .

The executable will be in

bin/mypackage

You can run it using

./bin/mypackage

which will print

Hello World!

I also recommend to add this .gitignore:

CMakeCache.txt
CMakeFiles/
Makefile
bin/
cmake_install.cmake
conan.lock
conanbuildinfo.cmake
conanbuildinfo.txt
conaninfo.txt
graph_info.json