cpptraining.ConfiguringGccToUseCpp0xInEclipseCdt

Overview

This is a description of why I chose to use C++0x for some examples and how to configure gcc to allow for C++0x. If you are interested in the how, just skip to the steps.

Background

While working on these materials, I came across a need to write examples using the boost::bind method. The boost::bind method creates a function object that is typically passed in as a parameter to an algorithm. The problem was that to write examples, I wanted to distinguish between the creation of the binding and its execution.

What I ended up doing and then trashing was using template methods. This made things worse rather than better because it added a level of indirection and moved away from what I wanted to demonstrate. I asked Michael Feathers for his advice and he recommend I use the type inference feature of C++0x. This allowed me to write something like this:

int foo() {
  auto functor = boost::bind(....);
  functor(1, 2, 3);
}

The first line uses the boost::bind method and creates some opaque type. The second line executes that functor. The underlying requirement of a functor is that it responds to the () operator, as in:

class Foo {
public;
  int operator()(int a, int b, int c) { return a + b / c; }
};

int bar() {
  Foo f;
  return f(1, 2, 3);
}

The Steps

These steps assume you have some project setup using CppUTest. If not, see below.

Select your project and edit its properties: right-click::edit properties (or alt-enter)
Go to C/C++ Build::Settings::GCC C++ Settings
Under miscellaneous add-std=c++0x. My version already had a setting, so it looks like the following:

-c -fmessage-length=0 -std=c++0x

The Preliminary Steps

These steps assume you are using the latest version of the Eclipse CDT along with mingw and gcc 4.4 or later. If you need to figure out how to do that, follow these steps:

Note, the initial examples do you actually require you to compile boost as they use header-only features of the boost library.

Overview

Background

The Steps

The Preliminary Steps

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