The directory basic/cxx-program contains a simple C++ program. This program links against the library created in our previous example. Here is the main body of our program:

#include <BasicLibrary.hh>

int main()
{
    BasicLibrary b(5);
    b.hello();
    return 0;
}

This program includes the BasicLibrary.hh header file from the cxx-library build item. Here is the Abuild.mk for this build item:

TARGETS_bin := cxx-program
SRCS_bin_cxx-program := program.cc
RULES := ccxx

Notice that this is very similar to the Abuild.mk from the library build item. The only real difference is that the TARGETS and SRCS variables contain the word bin instead of lib. This tells abuild that these are executable targets rather than library targets. Notice the conspicuous lack of any references to the library build item or the location of the headers or libraries that it makes available. A principal feature of abuild is that this program build item does not need to know that information. Instead, it merely declares a dependency on the cxx-library build item by name. This is done in its Abuild.conf:

name: cxx-program
platform-types: native
deps: cxx-library

Notice the addition of the deps key in this file. This tells abuild that our program build item depends on the library build item. When abuild sees this, it automatically makes all the information in cxx-library's Abuild.interface available to cxx-program's build, alleviating the need for the cxx-program build item to know the locations of these files. This will also tell abuild that cxx-library must be built before we can build cxx-program.

To build this item, we just run the abuild command as we did for cxx-library. This will automatically build dependency cxx-library before building cxx-program. In this way, you can can start a build from any build item and let abuild automatically take care of building all of its dependencies in the correct order.

The output of running abuild in the cxx-program directory when starting from a clean build is shown below. Your actual output will differ slightly from this. In particular, the output below has the string --topdir-- in place of the path to doc/example, and the string <native> in place of your native platform. ^[8] Notice that abuild builds cxx-library first and then cxx-program:

abuild: build starting
abuild: cxx-library (abuild-<native>): all
make: Entering directory `--topdir--/basic/cxx-library/abuild-<native>'
Compiling ../BasicLibrary.cc as C++
Creating basic-library library
make: Leaving directory `--topdir--/basic/cxx-library/abuild-<native>'
abuild: cxx-program (abuild-<native>): all
make: Entering directory `--topdir--/basic/cxx-program/abuild-<native>'
Compiling ../program.cc as C++
Creating cxx-program executable
make: Leaving directory `--topdir--/basic/cxx-program/abuild-<native>'
abuild: build complete

To remove all of the files that abuild created in any build item's directory, you can run abuild clean in that directory. To clean everything in the build tree, run abuild --clean=all. More details of how to specify what to build and what to clean can be found in Chapter 9, Telling Abuild What to Build.