Documentation of BSUtilities - C++ Helper Classes

Version 0.6.1

Author:

Bernd Speiser, Institut für Organische Chemie, Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 18, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany; e-mail: bernd.speiser@uni-tuebingen.de

Introduction

This is at present only a VERY limited documentation. Work is in progress to give more details.

Some more information can be found in the README files.

This software provides some utility functions. It is partly written by B. Speiser, partly adapted from other sources. The parts written by B. Speiser are provided under the GPL. The code is written in C++, using templates, so your compiler should understand this language feature.

In the present version, the library contains

• N. Josuttis' reference counted pointer (RefCountedPointer.*; see the copyright notice in RefCountedPointer.h; see also http://www.josuttis.com/libbook/),
• Conversion between string, C-string, and a type T (by B. Speiser).
• Classes for file stream IO which handle the file name by storing and giving the possibility to retrieve (by B. Speiser).
• Some template tools according to A. Alexandrescu, as well as Eisenecker and Czarnecki, including own extension.
• the xmlwriter file, which implements in its classes a stream which writes xml code; by Obultus (http://www.codeproject.com/vcpp/stl/simple_xmlwriter.asp) with some changes and additions by B. Speiser.
• the code of TinyXml (http://tinyxml.sourceforge.net/) in version 2.4.2 for input from XML files

Prerequisites

BSUtilities was developed with gcc version 3.2 or later versions. The use of this compiler for installation of the current version is recommended.

You will need to have installed A. Alexandrescu's Loki library (see http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/loki-lib). Various versions were use for development, most recently v. 0.1.3. It is recommended to install this version.

Installation

You can install the header files and the BSUtilities library for your own use anywhere on your system.

Please check the prerequisites before! Then, set the environment variable

LOKISRC

to point to the header files of your Loki library installation.

Download the compressed tar archive (BSUtilities_${VERSION}.tar.gz) to any directory of your choice. If this directory is _dir_, the distribution will later reside in _dir_/BSUtilities_${VERSION}.

Uncompress (gunzip) and unpack (tar xf) the file. You may use "tar xzf".

Set a link to the version specific directory:

ln -s BSUtilities-${VERSION} BSUtilities

If such a link already exists, remove it before creating the new link.

Go to the distribution directory with

cd BSUtilities_${VERSION}

where you substitute ${VERSION} by the version number.

Now proceed with the (standard) instructions:

1. ./configure
   

   some options are noted here:

   ./configure --prefix=/<installDirectory> to choose a installation directory (default is /usr/local ).

   ./configure --enable-debug to build the libraries and tests with debugging informations

   type ./configure --help for more options,

2. make
   

3. make doc
   

   (optional)

   You need an installation of the doxygen program for this, see http://www.doxygen.org. This will invoke doxygen to generate a html and latex documentation. The files are then in the respective documentation directories of the source tree. Point your browser at file:///_dir_/Quantities-${VERSION}/documentation/html/index.html

4. make install
   

   (optional)

   this will install the libraries and binaries into the install directory specified with the --prefix option (default /usr/local)

To clean up the generated files, use

make clean

and/or

make doc-clean

For more information about configure options see the INSTALL file.

Usage

• Add include directives to your code:

  #include "*.h"
  

  where "*" is one of "Conversion", "NamedFileStream" "RefCountedPointer", "TemplateTools", "xmlReader", or "xmlwriter", according to your requirements.
• Point your compiler to the directory where the include files can be found (e.g., for gcc with the -I option) This could be installDirectory/include:

  -IinstallDirectory/include/BSUtilitites
  

  where installDirectory is the directory, which you stated as the prefix in the installation procedure.
• Use

  -lBSUtilities
  

  (for gcc) to link the BSUtilities library. You might need to set the directories where the linker searches for libraries with -L.

Documentation

You can find some running notes in file ./documentation/Notes.log.

Documentation in doxygen style is generated with make doc (see above).

see also BSUtilities.txt in this directory.

Please contact the author of the program at bernd.speiser@uni-tuebingen.de if you have specific questions about the software.

Bugs

Please report any bugs, shortcomings, suggestions, improvements etc. to the author.

History

BSUtilities was started as a helper project for the Quantities library in 2002. Since then various pieces of code have been added.

Changes from version 0.4 (status: January 15, 2006)

The following list gives some major changes:

1. xmlwriter code by Obultus was added with some modifications and additions (see documantation/Notes.log). This code allows the creation of an XML document and writing XML code to a file.
2. header and cpp files for TinyXml were added
3. convenience functions for reading (and loading from) an XML file with TinyXml were added
4. additional functions in TemplateTools:
   • SameTemplate_1 and SameTemplate_2 compare two templates with one or two class parameters
   • EmptyTemplate_1 and EmptyTemplate_2, empty template classes with one or two parameters

In addition, small bug fixes and additions have been included.

FAQ

none up to now

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