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Installation

Prerequisites

Build Executor

Based on your build backend, catalyst will want one of the following:

  • Catalyst Orchestrated Builder (cob) (preferred)
    • No installation required: Catalyst ships with an embedded cob binary that is automatically extracted to ~/.catalyst/bin/ (or %USERPROFILE%\.catalyst\bin\ on Windows) the first time a cob-backed build runs. If $HOME/$USERPROFILE are unavailable, installation falls back to a temporary directory.
    • To install cob yourself instead, see the GitHub
  • ninja
    • Available on most package managers
  • or make
    • Available on most package managers

C++ Compiler

Out of the box Catalyst works with any gnu-compatible compiler, namely gcc, g++, clang, and clang++.

Catalyst can be made to work with other compilers via Toolchain Definitions. A standard Windows toolchain definition is made available.

Dependency Managers

  • Catalyst depends on the following programs for dependency management
    • git
      • Available on most package managers.
    • vcpkg
    • pkg-config
      • Available on most package managers.

Optional Tools

  • Catalyst relies on external tools for certain subcommands:
    • doxygen (or clang-doc / jocasta)
      • Required for the catalyst doc subcommand. Available on most package managers.
    • clang-format
      • Required for the catalyst fmt subcommand. Available on most package managers.
    • clang-tidy
      • Required for the catalyst tidy subcommand. Available on most package managers.
    • cpack (distributed with cmake)
      • Required for the catalyst pack subcommand. Available on most package managers.

Installation

After fetching all prerequisites, download and install the relevant package from the latest GitHub release.

Tip

  • If an install fails, please open an issue with the error message
  • If your preferred format is not available, please open an issue requesting that it be provided.

Note

The package names might be different based on the version you are installing.

Building from Source

  1. Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/CatalystCPP/catalyst-build-system.git
cd catalyst
  1. Build the Bootstrap version using CMake:
git checkout tags/1.0.0
cmake -B build-bootstrap -S . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build-bootstrap --config Release
  1. Build Catalyst:
git checkout dev-1.1.0
mkdir build
./build-bootstrap/catalyst build
  1. Verify
./build/catalyst -v

Verifying Installation

Run the following command to verify that Catalyst is installed correctly:

catalyst -v # should be 1.1.0 or later

Next Steps