Installation

The project consits of two main parts:

Reflection library
Code generator

The Easy Reflection C++ Generator utilizes Clang libraries to analyze C++ source code. To support reflection attributes in the source code, I had to patch llvm and link it as a dependency. Therefore, the only option is to build llvm from source. Be patient, as this process will not be quick(about 45m on a GitHub runner).

To analyze your project and generate reflection code, ensure you have a compile_commands.json file. If you're using CMake, you can easily enable this by adding the following line to your CMakeLists.txt file:

set(CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS ON)

Windows

Visual Studio CMake generators do not create compile_commands.json. However, you can use Ninja instead.

To build er_gen and use reflection on Windows, make sure to install the following dependencies and add them to your PATH:

Git
CMake
Ninja

If you choose the MSVC compiler, additionally install:

C++ ATL
Windows SDK

Further steps

Another submodule is vcpkg which manages most of the dependencies, all of them will be installed by CMake automatically.

After installing all the dependencies, you need to decide whether you want to use simdjson for parsing or not. While simdjson provides the fastest performance on supported hardware, rapidjson might be faster in virtual environments. The solution includes a native parser that is available regardless. It offers more flexibility when it comes to map parsing but not as fast.

If, for some reason, you want to exclude simdjson from the dependencies, you can use the following CMake option:

-DUSE_SIMD_JSON=OFF

Docker

This repository includes a Dockerfile that sets up an Ubuntu 22.04 environment, builds the generator, and runs tests on startup.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter errors like stddef.h or stdarg.h not being found during the generation process, add the following line to your CMakeLists.txt file:

set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES ${CMAKE_CXX_IMPLICIT_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES})

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