Question

I come from a Java/AS3/Javascript background where all of my classes are organized into packages that help denote their functionality.

In starting a C++ project I sought to mimic this file system structure in mostly the same way but I’ve been running into issues with the includes.

Currently I have an src directory with the main.cpp file inside it. Then I have some root directories and with other files inside. Here’s an example:

src

->main.cpp

->window

—->Window.h

—->Window.cpp

main.cpp includes Window.h with the statement #include “Window.h” and everything builds just fine. But if i restart Visual Studio, it complains that it can’t find “Window.h”.

In looking a open source projects, I’ve seen some that just have all the source files in one directory with no nesting for easy includes I suppose. Some have the headers and cpp files separated.

What is the correct way (or at least a way that will cause less headaches) to organize a large-ish C++ project on the file system?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Breaking it out like you’ve tried to do is reasonable and easy enough to accomplish.

You just need to set your project’s include paths. From Visual Studio, right click on the project name and click “Properties”. From there, in the tree control on the left hand side, expand “C/C++”, and then select “General” in the tree. The first option on the right hand side should then be “Additional Include Directories”.

There you have several options:

You can specify specific include directories (separated by semicolons). For instance, if you had folders “Window” and “Printing” you could put in:

..\Window;..\Printing

Which would allow you to include the files from window and printing easily, like this:

#include <Window.h>     // from src/window
#include <Printing.h>   // from src/printing

The above approach has some drawbacks, as you can easily collide with names from other libraries you may be using, making the include ORDER very important.

A better approach (in my opinion) is to add the following as an include path:

..\

This will make it search the parent directory when looking for includes. This allows you to be more verbose in your include paths, like this:

#include <Window/Window.h>     // it's more clear where these are coming from
#include <Printing/Printing.h> // and much less likely to collide with other library
                               // header files