comet

Warning: comet is currently experimental and under active development. It is not recommended for use in production environments. APIs, commands, and behavior may change without notice.

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Scaffold, build, and run your C projects from C.

Install

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ashtonjamesd/comet/main/install.sh)"

Quick start

comet init && comet run

Project structure

comet init generates the following:

├── build.c        # build configuration and dependency declarations
├── .gitignore     # C gitignore template
├── src/
│   ├── common.h   # common libc headers
│   └── main.c     # entry point
├── test/
│   └── main.c     # test entry point
├── lib/           # fetched dependencies
└── build/         # compiled output

build.c

Every project has a build.c that defines how it compiles and what dependencies it needs.

#include <comet.h>

Project comet_build_project(void) {
   Project p = comet_project();

   comet_build_with(&p, GCC);
   comet_use_directory(&p, "src");

   comet_build_exe_called(&p, "build/exe");
   comet_cflags(&p, "-Wall -Wextra -Werror");

   return p;
}

int comet_fetch(Project *p) {
   if (!comet_fetch_header("ashtonjamesd/claim", "claim.h")) return 1;
   return 0;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
   if (argc < 2) return 1;

   Project p = comet_build_project();

   comet_on_build(&p, comet_build);
   comet_on_fetch(&p, comet_fetch);

   return comet_run(&p, argc, argv);
}

Build configuration

Function	Description
comet_project()	Create a project with default settings
comet_build_with(&p, GCC)	Set compiler (GCC, CLANG)
comet_use_directory(&p, "src")	Add all .c files from a directory
comet_add_source_file(&p, "file.c")	Add a single source file
comet_build_exe_called(&p, "build/exe")	Set output executable path
comet_optimize_with(&p, GCC_O2)	Set optimization level
comet_standard(&p, C17)	Set C standard (C89, C99, C11, C17, C23)
comet_warnings(&p, WARN_ALL)	Set warning flags (combinable with |)
comet_cflags(&p, "-DDEBUG")	Pass additional compiler flags

Dependencies

Declare dependencies in comet_fetch to fetch header files from GitHub repos into lib/.

comet_fetch_header("user/repo", "path/to/header.h");

Running comet fetch will always re-fetch all dependencies, replacing any existing files in lib/. This ensures your dependencies stay up to date with the latest version from the remote repo.

Custom commands

You can register custom commands in build.c using comet_command. These are invoked the same way as built-in commands.

int lint(Project *p) {
   return system("cppcheck src/");
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
   if (argc < 2) return 1;

   Project p = comet_build_project();

   comet_on_build(&p, comet_build);
   comet_on_fetch(&p, comet_fetch);
   comet_command(&p, "lint", lint);

   return comet_run(&p, argc, argv);
}

comet lint

Passing arguments

Arguments passed after the command name are forwarded to the executable when using comet run.

comet run --verbose --port 8080

Testing

Comet projects come shipped with claim, a lightweight single-header unit testing framework, fetched automatically into lib/ during comet init. Tests live in test/main.c and are run with comet test.

Commands

comet init          scaffold a new project
comet build         compile the project using build.c
comet run           build and run the executable
comet test          compile and run tests
comet fetch         fetch dependencies into lib/
comet clean         remove build artifacts

comet <custom>      run a custom command registered in build.c

License

MIT