For API / ABI compatibility reasons, it is recommended to build and use abseil in a subdirectory of your project or as an embedded dependency
This is similar to the recommended usage of the googletest framework ( https://github.com/google/googletest/blob/master/googletest/README.md )
Build and use step-by-step
1- Download abseil and copy it in a sub-directory in your project. or add abseil as a git-submodule in your project
2- If not done yet, download and copy in your project the two dependencies of abseil cctz and googletest
* cctz https://github.com/google/cctz * googletest https://github.com/google/googletest
3- You can then use the cmake command add_subdirectory() to include abseil directly and use the abseil targets in your project.
Note: Abseil requires CCTZ and the googletest framework. Consequently, the targets `gtest`, `gtest_main`, `gmock` and `cctz` need to be declared in your project before including abseil with `add_subdirectory`.
4- Add the absl:: target you wish to use to the target_link_libraries() section of your executable or of your library
Here is a short CMakeLists.txt example of a possible project file
using abseil
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.12)
project(my_project)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-std=c++11 -stdlib=libc++ ${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS}")
add_subdirectory(googletest)
add_subdirectory(cctz)
add_subdirectory(abseil-cpp)
add_executable(my_exe source.cpp)
target_link_libraries(my_exe absl::base absl::synchronization absl::strings)
You will need to create your own CMake files for cctz until https://github.com/google/cctz/pull/54 lands. As of this writing, that pull request requires -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF as it doesn‘t correctly export cctz’s dependency on Google Benchmark.
You will find here a non exhaustive list of absl public targets absl::base absl::algorithm absl::container absl::debugging absl::memory absl::meta absl::numeric absl::strings absl::synchronization absl::time absl::utility