!!! Getting Started as a SIL Kit Developer 

!!! Build Prerequisites 

To get started developing you’ll need the following prerequisites:

Git
C++ compiler (Visual Studio 2017 or newer, GCC, Clang)
CMake
C++ dependencies are managed as submodules, e.g. run git submodule update –init –recursive

For generating the documentation, you will require:

Python3 dependencies, see: SilKit/ci/docker/docs_requirements.txt
- install with pip3 install -r SilKit/ci/docker/docs_requirements.txt
- and pipenv: pip3 install pipenv
doxygen

!!! Build Configuration 

The SIL Kit build system is based on CMake and can be customized at configuration time. The following options are available:

CMake Options
SILKIT_BUILD_TESTS	Build the test cases
SILKIT_BUILD_UTILITIES	Build the utility tools like the System Controller or Monitor.
SILKIT_BUILD_DEMOS	Build the demo applications
SILKIT_BUILD_DOCS	Build the documentation using Doxygen and Sphinx
SILKIT_INSTALL_SOURCE	Installs the source-tree (used for packaging releases). Implies SILKIT_BUILD_DOCS.
SILKIT_ENABLE_COVERAGE	Instrument the build for gcov based code coverage (gcc, clang)

In general, the options can be combined and set using the CMake GUI, your IDE, or command line:

cmake .. -D SILKIT_BUILD_TESTS=ON -D SILKIT_BUILD_DOCS=ON

!!! Building Documentation 

Install the required Python dependencies:

pip3 install -r SilKit/ci/docker/docs_requirements.txt
pip3 install pipenv

You will need to set the SILKIT_BUILD_DOCS option:

cmake $source_dir -D SILKIT_BUILD_DOCS=ON

The documentation target is called Doxygen:

cmake --build . --target Doxygen

Refer to !!! How to write reStructuredText? for guidelines on formatting the documentation.

!!! Packaging 

SIL Kit uses CPack to generate the release distributions in ZIP form. It can be packaged using the package target:

cmake --build . --target package

The generated package adheres to the following template SilKit-<VERSION>-<compiler>-<OS>-<TYPE>.zip. Its contents are as follows:

Package Contents
Zip Path	CMake Option	Description
CHANGELOG.rst		Documented changes
SilKit/		The SIL Kit binaries and CMake config export
SilKit-Demos/	SILKIT_INSTALL_SOURCE	Source code of the demos, builds against `../SilKit`
SilKit-Source/	SILKIT_INSTALL_SOURCE	The SIL Kit sources.
SilKit-Documentation/	SILKIT_BUILD_DOCS	Html documentation

!!! Building the Demos 

Building the demos from within the source tree is straight forward: just build the Demos CMake target. The individual demos are build as a dependency.

The distributed Demos, as packaged by CPack, are preconfigured to build against a copy of the SIL Kit binaries in ../SilKit/. This can be overriden by providing your own SilKit CMake target library, before the demos are configured by CMake. Or by changing the find_package(SilKit ... PATHS path/to/SilKit) statement directly in the SilKit-Demos/CMakeLists.txt directory.

!!! Running the Tests 

Every test suite is registered with CTest and labeled by its kind:

Test Labels
unit	Tests of single components, using mocks where needed
integration	Tests running a registry and several participants
functional	Long-running functional and performance tests, not run in CI

Tests are selected by label:

ctest --preset debug -L 'unit|integration'

The integration tests using only the public API can also be built against a prebuilt SIL Kit package. SILKIT_DIR points to the directory containing SilKitConfig.cmake:

cmake -S SilKit/IntegrationTests -B _build/itests -D SILKIT_DIR=path/to/SilKit/lib/cmake/SilKit
cmake --build _build/itests
ctest --test-dir _build/itests -L 'unit|integration'

Code coverage requires gcc and gcovr. The coverage preset is a Debug build with SILKIT_ENABLE_COVERAGE enabled:

cmake --preset coverage
cmake --build --preset coverage
ctest --preset coverage -L 'unit|integration'
gcovr --root . --filter SilKit/source/ --html-nested _build/coverage/report/index.html

The Linux Coverage GitHub workflow (.github/workflows/coverage.yml) runs weekly and on demand. It reports the line coverage per component for the unit tests alone and together with the integration tests, and excludes test sources, mocks and test utilities from the report.