For building on any platform with any supported build system Xerces-C++ uses the CMake build generator and requires that you have CMake installed. Additionally, a build tool such as GNU make or Ninja is required for building. CMake supports a wide range of generators for several different compilers, build tools and popular IDEs, including Eclipse, Kate, Visual Studio, Sublime Text and more. Any of these may be used to build Xerces-C++. Run cmake --help to display the full list of supported generators for your platform.

As with all CMake projects, the build process is divided into several parts: configuration and building, followed by (optional) testing and installation. The configuration part is performed by running the cmake command. The build part is performed by invoking the chosen build tool such as make or ninja, or by opening the generated project files in your IDE, and building from within the IDE.

Besides the standard cmake variables, Xerces-C++ provides a number of project-specific options that are worth mentioning. You can specify one option for each category outlined below. If you do not specify anything for a particular category then cmake will select the most appropriate default, based upon the available options for your system. At the end of its execution cmake prints the selected values for each category.

Net Accessor (used to access network resources):

Transcoder (used to convert between internal UTF-16 and other encodings):

Message Loader (used to access diagnostics messages):

Thread support is enabled by default and can be disabled with the -Dthreads:BOOL=OFF option. If disabled, it will not be possible to select a mutex manager other than nothreads.

Shared libraries are built by default. You can use the -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS:BOOL=OFF option to build static libraries.

If you need to specify compiler executables that should be used to build Xerces-C++, you can set the CC and CXX environment variables when invoking cmake. Similarly, if you need to specify additional compiler or linker options, you can set the CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, and LDFLAGS environment variables. For example:

	CC=gcc-5.3 CXX=g++-5.3 CFLAGS=-O3 CXXFLAGS=-O3 cmake ...

If building on Windows, the specific Visual Studio version may be selected with some generators, and this may be run from a normal command prompt. If using a generic generator such as Ninja, then cmake should be run from a Visual Studio command prompt, or in a suitably configured environment, so that the correct compiler will be detected.

Once the configuration part is complete you can run the build tool of choice. This may be done generically using cmake --build . [--config=Debug|Release]. Alternatively, a specific build tool, e.g. make, gmake, ninja or msbuild corresponding to the chosen generator may be used directly. When invoked without a specific target, it will build the Xerces-C++ library, all examples and all unit tests.

If you would like to run the automated test suite, run ctest [-V] [-C Debug|Release]. This will run all tests. Additional options are available, such as running a subset of the tests and running the tests in parallel. If any discrepancies in the output are detected, the differences will be displayed if a diff program is available.

Finally, install the library and examples. This may be done generically using cmake --build . --target install. Alternatively, a specific build tool may be used, e.g. make install. To change the installation directory, use the -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=prefix cmake option.

Some platforms and configurations may require extra cmake options. Run cmake -LH to list the additional options, along with a short description for each. For each of the selection categories mentioned above, the help text will list the valid choices detected for your platform. Run cmake -LAH for all the additional advanced settings.

Several examples of configuring, building, testing and installing with CMake using different platforms, generators, and installation options are shown below:

Note that different UNIX platforms use different system environment variables for finding shared libraries. On Linux and Solaris, the environment variable name is LD_LIBRARY_PATH, on AIX it is LIBPATH, on Mac OS X it is DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH, and on HP-UX it is SHLIB_PATH.

Note that Windows is different from the UNIX platforms in the way it finds shared libraries at run time. While UNIX platforms may use the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable, Windows uses the PATH environment variable if the library is not in the same directory as the executable.

For building on UNIX and UNIX-like (GNU/Linux, Max OS X, Cygwin, MinGW-MSYS) platforms Xerces-C++ uses the GNU automake-based build systems and requires that you have GNU make installed. On some platforms GNU make is called gmake instead of make.

As with all automake-based projects the build process is divided into two parts: configuration and building. The configuration part is performed using the configure script that can be found in the xerces-c-3.2.0 directory. The build part is performed by invoking make.

Besides the standard configure options which you can view by running configure --help, Xerces-C++ provides a number of project-specific options that are worth mentioning. You can specify one option for each category outlined below. If you do not specify anything for a particular category then configure will select the most appropriate default. At the end of its execution configure prints the selected values for each category.

Net Accessor (used to access network resources):

Transcoder (used to convert between internal UTF-16 and other encodings):

Message Loader (used to access diagnostics messages):

Thread support is enabled by default and can be disabled with the --disable-threads option.

By default configure selects both shared and static libraries. You can use the --disable-shared and --disable-static options to avoid building the version you don't need.

Finally, to make the build process cleaner the Xerces-C++ build system hides actual compiler commands being executed by make. If you would like to see those then you can specify the --disable-pretty-make option.

If you need to specify compiler executables that should be used to build Xerces-C++, you can set the CC and CXX variables when invoking configure. Similarly, if you need to specify additional compiler or linker options, you can set the CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, and LDFLAGS variables. For example:

	./configure --disable-static CC=gcc-4.3 CXX=g++-4.3 CFLAGS=-O3 CXXFLAGS=-O3

Once the configuration part is complete you can run make (or gmake). Running make from the xerces-c-3.2.0 directory builds Xerces-C++ library and examples. The library is placed into the src/.libs directory. If you like to build only the library, you can run make from xerces-c-3.2.0/src.

If you would like to build the tests and run the automated test suite, run make check from the xerces-c-3.2.0 directory. The automated test suite required Perl and the diff command.

Finally, to install the library and examples you can run make install (or gmake install). To change the installation directory, use the --prefix configure option.

Some platforms and configurations require extra configure and make options which are shown in the following table.

Note that different UNIX platforms use different system environment variable for finding shared libraries. On Linux and Solaris, the environment variable name is LD_LIBRARY_PATH, on AIX it is LIBPATH, on Mac OS X it is DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, and on HP-UX it is SHLIB_PATH.

Note that Cygwin and MinGW are different from the UNIX platforms in the way they find shared libraries at run time. While UNIX platforms may use the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable, Cygwin and MinGW use the PATH environment variable.