External Boost and ASIO library support for using with Conan package manager

[SX91]

It would be nice to support Boost include dirs override. For example:

if (HZ_EXTERNAL_BOOST)
    find_package(Boost REQUIRED)
    include_directories(${Boost_INCLUDE_DIRS})
else ()
    include_directories(SYSTEM ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/external/include/)
endif(HZ_EXTERNAL_BOOST)

[ihsandemir]

Hello, it can be done. Did current version caused any problems like version compatibility, etc?

[SX91]

@ihsandemir I'm using hazelcast cpp client as conan package (with many others packages depending on Boost). I can easily override Boost version with any new/old one, same with asio, so all of my dependencies would be compiled with same Boost version.

Did current version caused any problems like version compatibility, etc?

Can't provide such info, but I had some compatibility problems with shared_ptr (compiled one module with 1.66.0, another with 1.5X.0, the system one).

[ihsandemir]

Ok, I see. I think we can do this since there is a need for it.

Did you package Hazelcast for conan? Are there any code changes you needed to make the conan package?

[SX91]

Ok, I see. I think we can do this since there is a need for it.

Thank you!

Did you package Hazelcast for conan?

Not really. I've written the basic recipe for hazelcast-cpp-client, but didn't polish it enough nor covered all possible cmake options there.

Are there any code changes you needed to make the conan package?

Only a few CMakeLists.txt changes. Allowed Boost and ASIO directories to be externally overriden.

if (${HZ_EXTERNAL_BOOST} MATCHES "ON")
    message(STATUS "Using external Boost headers")
    find_package(Boost REQUIRED)
    include_directories(${Boost_INCLUDE_DIRS})
else ()
    include_directories(SYSTEM ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/external/include/)
endif (${HZ_EXTERNAL_BOOST} MATCHES "ON")

if ("${HZ_ASIO_INCLUDE_DIR}" STREQUAL "")
    set(HZ_ASIO_INCLUDE_DIR ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/external/include/asio/asio/include/)
endif ("${HZ_ASIO_INCLUDE_DIR}" STREQUAL "")
message(STATUS "Using HZ_ASIO_INCLUDE_DIR: ${HZ_ASIO_INCLUDE_DIR}")
include_directories(${HZ_ASIO_INCLUDE_DIR})

[SX91]

Oops, not quite. With HZ_BUILD_WITH_SSL option turned on, some includes for asio/asio/include/asio/ssl/* get activated. So if I override asio path, compilation fails.

[ihsandemir]

Hello @SX91

Regarding the asio library I had to do this fix to make it compile with a pretty old gcc 3.4.6: ihsandemir/asio@925ef44

Hence, the cpp library actually uses a release of asio with this commit together and asio is linked as a module from here: https://github.com/ihsandemir/asio/commits/asiowithfix

I wonder what your compilation failures were but I suspect if it was related to this fix. Can you please share the compilation failure that you see?

I am very interested to integrate our client with the Conan package manager, what is your experience with conan? I wonder how widely it is used by the C++ community. I like to hear your experiences with it.

[SX91]

Hello @ihsandemir

I wonder what your compilation failures were but I suspect if it was related to this fix. Can you please share the compilation failure that you see?

I had compilation failures because of this (incorrect) paths:
https://github.com/hazelcast/hazelcast-cpp-client/blob/master/hazelcast/src/hazelcast/util/SyncHttpsClient.cpp#L25
https://github.com/hazelcast/hazelcast-cpp-client/blob/master/hazelcast/include/hazelcast/util/SyncHttpsClient.h#L24
https://github.com/hazelcast/hazelcast-cpp-client/blob/master/hazelcast/include/hazelcast/util/SyncHttpsClient.h#L25

Those paths require external/include to be used as include directory for project. As you already add asio include directory separately, this paths should actually look line asio/ssl/*.

By the way, shouldn't all those options check in CMakeLists be if (MY_OPTION) or if (NOT MY_OPTION) instead of if ("${MY_OPTION}" MATCHES "ON")? CMake's IF can accept a lot more values as True. Look at the if(<constant>) description here: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.0/command/if.html?highlight=#command:if

I am very interested to integrate our client with the Conan package manager, what is your experience with conan? I wonder how widely it is used by the C++ community. I like to hear your experiences with it.

Can't say anything for C++ community, but in my experience Conan makes C++ dependency management quite an easy task and doesn't force users to alternate those deps build system, only to create recipe for it. You can build package from source or use precompiled binary package if exists (or make your own).
It's still quite rough around the edges, but already very usable and helps save quite a lot of time and effort.

[ihsandemir]

Hello @SX91

Just submitted a PR to fix those include problems. Can you check the fix at #477 and let me know if it solves the problem.