Install from the source

Code source of SPY is available on GitHub and can be retrieved via the following command:

$ git clone https://github.com/jfalcou/spy.git

Once retrieved, you should have a spy folder which contains the whole source code.

Create a build directory here and enter it. Once in the build directory, you can use CMake to generate the build system for SPY. We recommend using Ninja but any build system is fine.

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake .. -G Ninja

Once CMake completes, you can use the install target to build and install SPY. By default, the library will be installed in the /usr/local directory, thus requiring root privileges.

$ sudo ninja install

You can select an alternative installation path by specifying the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX option at configuration time.

$ cmake .. -G Ninja -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=path/to/install

$ ninja install

Once installed, SPY is usable directly by providing the path to its installed files.

Standalone setup

You can also use SPY via a single standalone file that can be vendored in your own project without having to deal with SPY as a dependency.

Simply use wget to fetch the latest version and place it where you want:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jfalcou/spy/refs/heads/standalone/spy.hpp

Use SPY by just compiling your code with the include path pointing to the location of this single file.

CMake FetchContent

You can also use CMake FetchContent operation and use the spy::spy library target that our CMake exports.

##==================================================================================================
## Your project setup
##==================================================================================================
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.22)
project(spy-fetch LANGUAGES CXX)
 
include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(spy GIT_REPOSITORY "https://github.com/jfalcou/spy.git")
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(spy)
 
add_executable(test_spy ../main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(test_spy PUBLIC spy::spy)

Setup with CPM

The SPY library can be setup using CPM:

##==================================================================================================
## Your project setup
##==================================================================================================
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.18)
project(spy-cpm LANGUAGES CXX)
 
# Setup CPM - See https://github.com/cpm-cmake/CPM.cmake#adding-cpm
include(cpm.cmake)
 
CPMAddPackage ( NAME spy
                GIT_REPOSITORY "https://github.com/jfalcou/spy.git"
                OPTIONS "SPY_BUILD_TEST OFF"
              )
 
add_executable(test_spy ../main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(test_spy PUBLIC spy::spy)

Table of Contents

Install from the source

Standalone setup

CMake FetchContent

Setup with CPM