The directory cxx-library under doc/example/basic contains a simple C++ library. Our library is called basic-library. It implements the single C++ class called BasicLibrary using the header file BasicLibrary.hh and the source file BasicLibrary.cc. Here are the contents of those files:

#ifndef __BASICLIBRARY_HH__
#define __BASICLIBRARY_HH__

class BasicLibrary
{
  public:
    BasicLibrary(int);
    void hello();

  private:
    int n;
};

#endif // __BASICLIBRARY_HH__

#include "BasicLibrary.hh"
#include <iostream>

BasicLibrary::BasicLibrary(int n) :
    n(n)
{
}

void
BasicLibrary::hello()
{
    std::cout << "Hello.  This is BasicLibrary(" << n << ")." << std::endl;
}

Building this library is quite straightforward. Abuild's build files are generally declarative in nature: they describe what needs to be done rather than how it is done. Building a C or C++ library is a simple matter of creating an Abuild.mk file that describes what the names of the library targets are and what each library's sources are, and then tells abuild to build the targets using the C and C++ rules. Here is this library's Abuild.mk file:

TARGETS_lib := basic-library
SRCS_lib_basic-library := BasicLibrary.cc
RULES := ccxx

The string ccxx as the value of the RULES variable indicates that this is C or C++ code (“c” or “cxx”). In order for abuild to actually build this item, we also need to create an Abuild.conf file for it. The existence of this file is what makes this into a build item. We present the file here:

name: cxx-library
platform-types: native

In this file, the name key is used to specify the name of the build item and the platform-types key is used to help abuild figure out on which platforms it should attempt to build this item. Finally, we want this build item to be able to make the resulting library and header file available to other build items. This is done in its Abuild.interface file:

INCLUDES = .
LIBDIRS = $(ABUILD_OUTPUT_DIR)
LIBS = basic-library

This tells abuild to add the directory containing this file to the include path, the output directory in which the generated targets were created to the library path, and the basic-library library to the list of libraries to be linked with. Notice that the name of the library assigned to the LIBS variable is the same as the value assigned to the TARGETS_lib variable in the Abuild.mk file, and that the abuild-provided variable $(ABUILD_OUTPUT_DIR) is used as the library directory. All relative paths specified in the Abuild.interface file are relative to the directory that contains the Abuild.interface file. They are automatically converted internally by abuild to absolute paths, which helps to keep build items location-independent.

To build this item, you would run the command abuild in the basic/cxx-library directory. Abuild will create an output directory whose name would start with abuild- and be based on the platform or platforms on which abuild was building this item. This is the directory to which the variable $(ABUILD_OUTPUT_DIR) refers in the Abuild.interface file.

There is a lot of capability hiding beneath the surface here and quite a bit of flexibility in the exact way in which this can be done, but this is the basic pattern you will observe for the majority of C and C++ library build items.