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Beast quickstart

We will build a sample project available at https://github.com/GauravDawra/Beast-quickstart, with the help of Beast. A Beast build file has already been provided with this repository. Make sure that Beast has already been installed before moving forward. See Installation.

Follow these steps to build the repository:

Step 1: Clone the repository​

First we will clone this repository locally to test out Beast. To do this, open a terminal and type:

git clone https://github.com/GauravDawra/Beast-quickstart.git beast-quickstart

This will clone the repository in a beast-quickstart folder.

Step 2: Open the folder​

Next, navigate to the cloned repository by typing:

cd beast-quickstart

Open the beast.build file to check out it's contents. For the purpose of this tutorial, it is not important to understand what this beast file does. You can check out the Writing a Beast file page in the documentation.

The folder structure will be:

beast-quickstart
├── sub
│   ├── beast.build
│   └── subMain.cpp
├── README.md
├── beast.build
├── main.cpp
├── util.cpp
└── util.h

Broadly speaking, this build file defines 3 targets: main: our final executable, util.o: an object file for utility functions and buildSub: a target to build subdirectory sub. The executable is dependent on the object file. Note that the sub folder itself contains a beast.build file to build targets specific to the folder.

use tabs

Remember to use tabs inside the build rules when giving commands, and not just spaces. If the shell commands inside the build rules, commands followed '!' (exclamation mark), are indented using spaces instead of a tab, make sure to convert these spaces into a single tab indent.

Step 3: Building via Beast​

Now that we have setup everything, we are ready to build our project. To start the build, simply run the following command:

beast

This will start your build process and will also tell you which target is being currently built. Once the build is complete, you will see two new files in beast-quickstart (current) folder, main and util.o.

Step 4: Running the executable​

To run the newly created executable, run the following command:

./main

You should also try running the executable subMain created in the folder sub:

./sub/subMain

Great!!! You have completed the quickstart tutorial for Beast. Move on to the documentation for learning more about Beast and build files to start creating your own projects!!