Hey everyone,
I've been working on CForge, a build system and project manager for C and C++ that aims to bring a more modern, streamlined experience to native development. Think of it as something like Cargo for Rust, but for C/C++ projects.
# What is CForge?
CForge is a CLI tool that wraps CMake and handles the tedious parts of C/C++ project management:
Project scaffolding \- `cforge init` creates a new project with a sensible structure and a simple `cforge.toml` config file
Dependency management \- Pull in Git repos or vcpkg packages with
cforge add, and CForge handles the restSimple build commands \- `cforge build`, `cforge run`, `cforge test` do what you'd expect
Workspaces \- Manage multiple related projects together (like Cargo workspaces)
Cross-platform \- Works on Windows (MSVC), Linux (GCC), and macOS (Clang)
The goal is to reduce the friction of starting and maintaining C/C++ projects without hiding CMake entirely. You can still drop down to raw CMake when needed.
# What's new in v2.2.0
This release adds a bunch of commands I've wanted for a while:
`cforge watch` \- File watcher that auto-rebuilds when you save. Add `--run` to automatically run after successful builds. Great for quick iteration.
`cforge bench` \- Google Benchmark integration. Run benchmarks with filtering and JSON/CSV output. (this is probably a little buggy, I haven't done extensive testing on it)
`cforge tree` \- Visualize your dependency tree in the terminal with color-coded output for different dependency types.
`cforge new` \- Scaffold files from templates. `cforge new class MyClass` generates the header and source file with boilerplate.
`cforge doc` \- Generate Doxygen documentation with a single command.
`cforge lock` \- Lock file support for reproducible builds. Commit `cforge.lock` to your repo and run `cforge lock --verify` in CI.
`cforge fmt` and `cforge lint` \- Wrappers around clang-format and clang-tidy.
`cforge completions` \- Generate shell completions for bash, zsh, fish, and PowerShell.
I also increased the default build timeout from 60s to 10 minutes, which should help on slower CI runners or large Release builds.
# What's new in v2.2.1
Patch release fixing several Windows-specific issues:
Fixed the
cforge update command to actually work (it was cloning the repo but not building/installing)Fixed file permission errors during self-update on Windows
Fixed CMake version parsing for release candidates and alpha versions
Fixed the `min`/`max` macro conflict that was breaking `cforge watch` on Windows
Standardized install paths so manual installs and
cforge update put the binary in the same place# Links
GitHub: [https://github.com/ChaseSunstrom/cforge](https://github.com/ChaseSunstrom/cforge)
Installation: Clone and run
bootstrap.ps1 (Windows) or `bootstrap.sh` (Linux/macOS) or read: https://github.com/ChaseSunstrom/cforge/tree/master?tab=readme-ov-file#-installationWould love to hear feedback, bug reports, or feature requests. Still in beta so expect some rough edges, but it's stable enough for personal projects and I've been using it daily.
https://redd.it/1pad2i6
@r_cpp
