sdbus-c++

sdbus-c++ is a high-level C++ D-Bus library for Linux designed to provide expressive, easy-to-use API in modern C++. It adds another layer of abstraction on top of sd-bus, a nice, fresh C D-Bus implementation by systemd.

sdbus-c++ has been written primarily as a replacement of dbus-c++, which currently suffers from a number of (unresolved) bugs, concurrency issues and inherent design complexities and limitations. sdbus-c++ has learned from dbus-c++ and has chosen a different path, a path of simple yet powerful design that is intuitive and friendly to the user and inherently free of those bugs.

Even though sdbus-c++ uses sd-bus library, it is not necessarily constrained to systemd and can perfectly be used in non-systemd environments as well.

Building and installing the library

The library is built using CMake:

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ${OTHER_CONFIG_FLAGS}
$ cmake --build .
$ sudo cmake --build . --target install

CMake configuration flags for sdbus-c++

• SDBUSCPP_BUILD_CODEGEN [boolean]

  Build the codegen tool sdbus-c++-xml2cpp for generating the high level C++ bindings out of the D-Bus IDL XML description. Default value: OFF. Use -DSDBUSCPP_BUILD_CODEGEN=ON flag to turn on building the code gen.

• SDBUSCPP_BUILD_DOCS [boolean]

  Include sdbus-c++ documentation files and tutorials. Default value: ON. With this option turned on, you may also enable/disable the following option:

  • SDBUSCPP_BUILD_DOXYGEN_DOCS [boolean]

    Build Doxygen documentation of sdbus-c++ API. If enabled, the documentation must still be built explicitly through cmake --build . --target doc. Default value: OFF. Use -DSDBUSCPP_BUILD_DOXYGEN_DOCS=OFF to disable searching for Doxygen and building Doxygen documentation of sdbus-c++ API.

• SDBUSCPP_BUILD_TESTS [boolean]

  Build sdbus-c++ unit and integration tests, invokable by cmake --build . --target test (Note: before invoking cmake --build . --target test, make sure you copy tests/integrationtests/files/org.sdbuscpp.integrationtests.conf file to /etc/dbus-1/system.d directory). That incorporates downloading and building static libraries of Google Test. Default value: OFF. Use -DBUILD_TESTS=ON to enable building the tests. With this option turned on, you may also enable/disable the following options:

  • SDBUSCPP_BUILD_PERF_TESTS [boolean]

    Build sdbus-c++ performance tests. Default value: OFF.

  • SDBUSCPP_BUILD_STRESS_TESTS [boolean]

    Build sdbus-c++ stress tests. Default value: OFF.

  • SDBUSCPP_TESTS_INSTALL_PATH [string]

    Path where the test binaries shall get installed. Default value: ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/tests/sdbus-c++ (previously: /opt/test/bin).

• SDBUSCPP_BUILD_EXAMPLES [boolean]

  Build example programs which are located in the example directory. Examples are not installed. Default value: OFF.

• SDBUSCPP_BUILD_LIBSYSTEMD [boolean]

  Build sd-bus (libsystemd library) instead of searching for it in the system, and make it part of sdbus-c++ library. Default value: OFF, which means that the sd-bus implementation library (libsystemd, libelogind, or basu) will be searched via pkg-config in the system.

  This option may be very helpful in environments where sd-bus implementation library is unavailable (see Solving sd-bus dependency for more information).

  With this option turned off, you may provide the following additional configuration flag:

  • SDBUSCPP_SDBUS_LIB [string]

    Defines which sd-bus implementation library to search for and use. Allowed values: default, systemd, elogind, basu. Default value: default, which means that sdbus-c++ will try to find any of systemd, elogind, basu in the order as listed here.

  With this option turned on, you may provide the following additional configuration flag:

  • SDBUSCPP_LIBSYSTEMD_VERSION [string]

    Defines version of systemd to be downloaded, built and integrated into sdbus-c++. Default value: 252, minimum value: 239.

  • SDBUSCPP_LIBSYSTEMD_EXTRA_CONFIG_OPTS [string]

    Additional options to be passed as-is to the libsystemd build system in its configure step. Can be used for passing e.g. toolchain file path in case of cross builds. Default value: empty.

• CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE [string]

  CMake-builtin option. Set to Release to build sdbus-c++ for production use. Set to Debug if you want to help further develop (and debug) the library :)

• BUILD_SHARED_LIBS [boolean]

  Global CMake flag, promoted in sdbus-c++ project to a CMake option. Use this to control whether sdbus-c++ is built as either a shared or static library. Default value: ON.

Dependencies

• C++20/C++17 - the library uses C++20 features, but its public API is backwards compatible with C++17 and provides optional extra features when C++20 features are available
• libsystemd/libelogind/basu - libraries containing sd-bus implementation that sdbus-c++ is written around. In case of libsystemd and libelogind, version >= 238 is needed. (In case you have you're missing any of those sd-bus implementations, don't worry, see Solving sd-bus dependency for more information.)
• googletest - google unit testing framework, only necessary when building tests, will be downloaded and built automatically.
• pkgconfig - required for sdbus-c++ to be able to find some dependency packages.
• expat - necessary when building the xml2cpp binding code generator (SDBUSCPP_BUILD_CODEGEN option is ON).

Licensing

The library is distributed under LGPLv2.1 license, with a specific exception for macro/template/inline code in library header files.

References/documentation

• Using sdbus-c++ - the main, comprehensive tutorial on sdbus-c++
• Systemd and dbus configuration
• D-Bus Specification
• sd-bus Overview

Contributing

Contributions that increase the library quality, functionality, or fix issues are very welcome. To introduce a change, please submit a pull request with a description.

Contact

https://github.com/Kistler-Group/sdbus-cpp