🚀 Simplifying C++ Multi-Platform Builds

Simplifying C++ Multi-Platform Builds with a single Python script. It started out with only Bash scripts and using Cygwin for on Windows.

Cross-platform C++ development often means juggling multiple toolchains, environments, and build configurations.
After wrestling with this complexity, I built a unified solution using a comprehensive automation script for CMake builds, which uses information from the presets json-configuration files.

What makes it powerful:

✅ Multi-Toolchain Support – Seamlessly switch between GNU, MinGW, MSVC, and ARM (cross-)compilers
✅ Cross-Platform Made Easy – Build for Linux, Windows, and ARM64 from a single environment
✅ Nested Execution – Chain Docker and Wine environments for specialized builds (yes, MSVC builds on Linux!)
✅ Interactive Interface – Optional menu system for selecting presets and targets
✅ Smart Environment Management – Automatic toolchain configuration with INI-based inheritance
✅ Complete Workflow Automation – Configure, build, test, package, and run—all in one command
✅ CI/CD Pipeline Docker – Run a complete workflow for all toolchains in CI/CD pipeline
✅ Run with Environment – Runs a build-target using the presets' environment

This approach has dramatically reduced build complexity in projects, enabling to focus on code rather than environment configuration.
The script leverages CMakePresets.json (+ CMakeUserPresets.json), supports custom toolchain paths, and handles the messy details of PATH variables, Wine prefixes, and Docker mounts automatically.
It allows building projects for multiple platforms and run the unittests on a single machine (Linux).
When necessary, the project can be built and debugged natively on any of the supported platforms.

📢 One unified interface for all platforms beats maintaining separate scripts for each toolchain.

Seeing is believing:

🎬 Boilerplate C++ project on Linux and Docker: https://youtu.be/124de2qlJ_M
🎬 Boilerplate C++ project on Windows: https://youtu.be/hlRSf4TdPtk
🎬 Piper1-GPL text-to-speech library: https://youtu.be/UL2fycF1sE8

#CPlusPlus #DevOps #BuildAutomation #CMake #CrossPlatform #DeveloperTools #SoftwareEngineering