Using the library

Using h5cpp with cmake

h5cpp not only uses CMake as a build system but also provides a CMake package which makes using the library with CMake quite simple. The CMake package is installed below PREFIX/lib/cmake/h5cpp-0.4.1 where PREFIX expands to the installation prefix used in the inital cmake call of the installation procedure.

Consider a simple project with the following directory structure

h5cpp_test/
   main.cpp
   CMakeLists.txt

To build a simple C++ program like this main.cpp

#include <iostream>
#include <h5cpp/hdf5.hpp>

int main()
{
      auto type = hdf5::datatype::TypeTrait<int>::create();
      std::cout<<type.get_class()<<std::endl;

      return 0;
}

the following CMakeLists.txt fiel is sufficient

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5.0)
project(h5cpp_test
        LANGUAGES C CXX
        VERSION 0.4.1)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)

find_package(h5cpp REQUIRED)
add_executable(h5cpp_test main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(h5cpp_test h5cpp)

Despite the C++ language standard all dependencies are provided by the package file via the imported target. You can build the code with

h5cpp_test:$ mkdir build
h5cpp_test:$ cd build
h5cpp_test:$ cmake -Dh5cpp_DIR=<INSTALLPREFIX>/lib/cmake/h5cpp-0.4.1 ../
h5cpp_test:$ make

The cmake variable h5cpp_DIR tells cmake where to look for the package files for h5cpp.