Building Sen from source¶

Most users do not need to build Sen themselves; the Conan package and the quick installer cover the common paths. Build from source when you want to track main, patch Sen for local development, or run on a platform without a release artifact.

Prerequisites¶

Always required

• A C++17 compiler (GCC 9.2.1+, Clang, or MSVC). Sen targets the C++17 language standard.
• Conan 2.x.

pip install -U conan

• On Linux, a couple of system libraries that Conan can't ship (pulled in by SDL2 / imgui via Sen's requirements() block in conanfile.py). On Debian / Ubuntu:

sudo apt install libxext-dev pkg-config

Equivalents on RHEL / Fedora / SUSE: libXext-devel (or libxext-devel) plus pkg-config. Conan can also install these for you if you set tools.system.package_manager:mode=install in your profile, but pre-installing them is simpler and less intrusive.

When you go through the Conan-driven path below, Conan downloads CMake (3.31.10) and Ninja (1.13.2) into its own cache as tool_requires: no system install needed for those.

Required only if you skip Conan

• CMake 3.21 or newer (the project minimum).
• Ninja (other generators work, but the bundled profiles assume Ninja).

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/airbus/sen.git
cd sen

Conan-driven build (recommended)¶

Step 1: make sure you have a Conan profile. The first time you use Conan, run:

conan profile detect

It inspects your installed compiler, OS, and architecture and writes ~/.conan2/profiles/default. Subsequent builds reuse it. If you skip this step, the next command errors with Profile 'default' doesn't exist.

Step 2: resolve dependencies and build:

conan install . --build=missing
cmake --preset conan-gcc-release
cmake --build --preset conan-gcc-release

Always pass --build=missing. Without it, Conan refuses to build any dependency that doesn't already have a matching binary in its cache.

The first run downloads and builds Sen's third-party dependencies (this can take a few minutes); subsequent runs reuse Conan's cache.

The exact preset name depends on the detected compiler: conan-gcc-release, conan-clang-release, and so on. Conan derives the name from tools.cmake.cmake_layout:build_folder_vars (set via the bundled profiles). If your detected profile doesn't set that conf, the preset is just conan-release. List what's available with:

cmake --list-presets

conan config install -tf profiles .conan/profiles/sen_gcc
conan install . --profile=sen_gcc --build=missing

Direct CMake build¶

Once conan install has populated the build folder with toolchain files, you can drive CMake directly. This is useful when iterating on Sen itself without re-running Conan each time.

conan install . --build=missing                     # generates the per-profile preset under build/
cmake --preset conan-gcc-release                     # configures the build
cmake --build --preset conan-gcc-release             # compiles

The preset name is not the same as the Conan profile name. Conan generates presets named conan-<compiler>-<build_type> when the profile sets tools.cmake.cmake_layout:build_folder_vars, and just conan-<build_type> otherwise.

Running the tests¶

ctest --preset conan-gcc-release

To run a single test target by name pattern:

ctest --preset conan-gcc-release -R <pattern>

Common first-run errors¶

Troubleshooting¶

• First-build memory pressure: building the dependency graph cold needs a few GB of RAM. Pass --parallel <N> to limit parallelism on constrained machines.

For other questions, the Troubleshooting guide and the FAQ cover the common cases. Bug reports are welcome via the project's issue tracker.