Setup your development environment

2. Setup your development environment#

We will develop software in C++ on our own computer, so we have to install developement tools first.

  1. Visual Studio Code is a popular extensible code editor available for Windows, Linux and macOS. Please download and install it.

  2. Next, we need a compiler. Consult C/C++ for VS Code to install the proper compiler for your system.

  3. CMake is a cross-platform software development tool for building applications, install it. Then, install the CMake Tools extension in VS Code.

  4. Install GitLens VS Code extension module

2.1. Clone a project from github#

Git is a popular version control system. It is free and open source.

GitHub is a platform and cloud-based service for software development and version control using Git.

Look for the github repository ASC-bla and git-clone it.

../_images/gitclone.png

If everything is setup right, VS Code will first run CMake and then your compiler to build the project.

If you prefer to use command line tools you enter

git clone https://github.com/TUWien-ASC/ASC-bla.git

Now we configure and build the project using cmake. You find a file ‘CMakeLists.txt’ describing the build structure for the project.

cd ASC-bla
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

You should have produced an executable ‘test_vector’, try it out.

2.2. Extend ASC-bla in team-work#

You will now add more functionality to ASC-bla. You want to do it in team-work. Form teams by 2-4 students. Go back to github, and register. One of the team will fork ASC-bla (name it as you like), and invites colleagues to the project.

Repeat the steps from before: Clone, configure, build, run

Exercise:

  • Extend the library by a Matrix class and provide the following operations:

    • Matrix-vector product

    • Matrix-matrix product

    • Transpose matrix function

    • Some tests for your classes

Allow to choose between row-major and column-major storage:

enum ORDERING { ColMajor, RowMajor };
template <typename T, ORDERING ORD>
class Matrix {
...
}

push your changes to your github project using either vs-code functionality, or command line instructions as

git add demos/demo_matrix.cpp src/matrix.hpp
git commit -m "added matrix class"
git push

The first command add stages your files you want to commit to your local version of the repository. With commit your local changes are taken over. Finally, with push you upload your local commits to the original git repo.

The other team-member can

git fetch
git merge

the contributions. Experiment with changing the same code regions.

  • Add more advanced features:

    • Inverse matrix using the Gauss-Jordan algorithm:

      Form matrix \(M = (A \; I)\), and perform row manipulations (like adding rows, swapping rows and scaling rows) to obtain \(\widetilde M = (I \; A^{-1})\).

    • Allow to add Vector<double> to a Vector<std::complex<double>>

      You can obtain the result-type via

      typedef decltype(std::declval<TA>()+std::declval<TB>()) TRES;
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