1. Dependencies

Required dependencies are

• cmake (>= 3.1)
• Compiler with c++14 support

Required dependencies building from sources tarball:

• libdds
• pcg-cpp

Recommended dependencies for development:

• perl and module IPC::Run
• lcov if compiling with gcc
• genhtml if compiling with gcc

Recommended run time dependencies are

• Bo's dds http://privat.bahnhof.se/wb758135/
• dds-driver for dealergenlib

libdds.so, libdds.dylib or dds.dll needs to be in runtime library search path to use double dummy solver in dealer scripts.

2. Building from sources

mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake -G<Your favorite generator> ..

Then you can compile sources using your selected build system.

Project settings can be modified using cmake GUI. (eg. ccmake ..)

3. Testing

Build system adds two testing targets. check target runs test using binary compiled with flags for configuration. check_coverage runs same set of tests using specially instrumented coverage binary. After running test build system runs tools to create html report. The report is automatically opened in browser.

mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ..
make check_coverage

4. Using dealer

Dealer uses a simple scripting language to allow user place conditions to generate hands, print hands and do statistical analyze. Example use would be to analyze number of control points in balanced hand with 20-22 HCP.

./dealer ../Examples/Descr.controls

The command use a source tree provide example script with limits and histogram printing action. Example output from the dealer command looks like

Frequency controls:
    4	      16
    5	     312
    6	    1616
    7	    3518
    8	    3476
    9	     988
   10	      74
Generated 1553663 hands
Produced 10000 hands
Initial random seed 1591209597
Time needed    0.426 sec

More details about scripting language can be found from Manual/index.html.

5. Development

If you want to write code or debug issues then it is best to set CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to RelWithDebInfo or Debug. If you use RelWithDebInfo then I would recommend removing NDEBUG from CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELWITHDEBINFO. Changing variables can be done using cmake user interface tools. Curses variant can be executed in a build directory like ccmake ...

Other helpful flags include adding -Wpedantic and -Wall to CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS. These gcc flags or similar for your compiler makes compiler warn about common programming errors which are likely to cause bugs.

Build system offers build targets to run test in different manners:

• check runs test suit once for the runtime detected optimization configuration
• check_failed runs only test cases which failed in the previous check or check_failed test run
• check_all runs test for all compiled optimization configurations
• check_all_failed runs failed tests from all configurations
• check_coverage builds and runs coverage instrument version and generates and html coverage report. This target requires optional tools for your compiler. (eg. gcov, lcov and genhtml for gcc)
• check_coverage_all is like check_coverage but runs test for all runtime configurations.

Asserts are written to indicate internal coding error. They are supposed to be impossible to trigger by any user input. But in practice bugs like incorrect state transitions or missing user input validation can lead to assert failure. Asserts are early warning indicating that follow up executions would have likely resulted to crash or garbage output. An early assert failure after a bug can make debugging the issue mush easier.

Old asserts have only condition without explanations. Often condition is self explanatory for someone familiar with the code. I decided to start add explanation strings to new asserts because a common case is assert failure happening for an user without understanding the code.

6. Packaging

The build system supports installation components Runtime, Development and Docs. Each target is expected to include files related to a specific type of distribution package.

Example use to installation to multiple packages. Commands are run in the build directory.

DESTDIR=../debian/tmp cmake -DCOMPONENT=Runtime -P cmake_install.cmake
DESTDIR=../debian/dev cmake -DCOMPONENT=Development -P cmake_install.cmake
DESTDIR=../debian/docs cmake -DCOMPONENT=Docs -P cmake_install.cmake

Build system offers packaging support using cpack. Supported targets are:

• package_source Generates source tarballs (default is .tar.gz and .zip)
• package Generates binary installers