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What is the usual/recommended way how to organize a multi-platform (Windows, Linux) C/C++ library project?
How to name function and provide OS-dependent implementations, organize includes etc.? Please, constructive ideas only — no pointers as “Look at Linux.”, ideas strongly welcome.
I use folders to put the dependent header/source files as this example shows
fs/filesystem.hpp <– main generic header that is what you include in any project and you can create a #define in there to ensure that a person only includes this one and if they include a sub one below, it will give a compile error pointing to this file as the one to include.
fs/linux/filesystem.hpp <– header for linux #included with #ifdef LINUX in main file above
fs/windows/filesystem.hpp <– header for windows #included with #ifdef WINDOWS in main file above
fs/linux/filesystem.cpp <– implementation for linux
fs/windows/filesystem.cpp <– implementation for windows
Then in my build system it’s easy to use the “$target” to include the relevant source files per os for the build.
The trick is to create a interface that you can typedef and hide from the user so that they only see this and not the implementation details
I personally hate source files littered with multiple OS #ifdefs throughout class definitions, types, headers, etc. and I prefer to fragment everything for the sake of clarity and ease of reading.