quickcpp

quickcpp is a small command-line tool to quickly build and run a single C++ file. Handy for quick experimentations.

Usage

The simplest usage is quickcpp <path/to/some/cppfile>. When called like this, quickcpp builds the file (producing a a.out file) and runs the result.

$ cat examples/helloworld.cpp 
#include <iostream>

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    std::cout << "Hello world!\n";
    return 0;
}

$ quickcpp examples/helloworld.cpp 
- Building ---------------------
c++ examples/helloworld.cpp -Wall -fPIC -std=c++17 -g
- Running ----------------------
Hello world!

Using other libraries

Want to experiment something with QtWidgets? You can specify any installed pkg-config compliant packages using -p <package>:

$ cat examples/qt.cpp 
#include <QApplication>
#include <QMainWindow>

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    QApplication app(argc, argv);

    QMainWindow window;
    window.setWindowTitle("Hello World");
    window.show();

    return app.exec();
}

$ quickcpp -p Qt5Widgets examples/qt.cpp 
- Building ---------------------
c++ examples/qt.cpp -Wall -fPIC -std=c++17 -g -DQT_WIDGETS_LIB -DQT_GUI_LIB -DQT_CORE_LIB -I/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/QtWidgets -I/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5 -I/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/QtGui -I/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5 -I/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/QtCore -I/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5 -lQt5Widgets -lQt5Gui -lQt5Core
- Running ----------------------

You should see a window like this one:

Any package listed by pkg-config --list-all can be used by quickcpp.

Live reload

quickcpp can use entr to automatically rebuild and rerun your file. Just install entr and run quickcpp with the -l flag.

Installation

The recommended solution is to use pipx:

pipx install quickcpp

But you can also install it with pip:

pip install --user quickcpp

License

Apache 2.0