arrow/cpp/examples/minimal_build

Minimal C++ build example

This directory showcases a minimal build of Arrow C++ (in build_arrow.sh). This minimal build is then used by an example third-party C++ project using CMake logic to compile and link against the Arrow C++ library (in build_example.sh and CMakeLists.txt).

When run, the example executable reads a file named test.csv, displays its parsed contents, and then saves them in Arrow IPC format in a file named test.arrow.

Running the example

You can run this simple example using Docker Compose and the given compose.yaml and dockerfiles, which installs a minimal Ubuntu image with a basic C++ toolchain.

Just open a terminal in this directory and run the following commands:

docker compose run --rm minimal

Note that this example mounts two volumes inside the Docker image:

• /arrow points to the Arrow source tree
• /io points to this example directory

Statically-linked builds

We've provided an example build configuration here with CMake to show how to create a statically-linked executable with bundled dependencies.

To run it on Linux, you can use the above Docker image:

docker compose run --rm static

On macOS, you can use the run_static.sh but you must set some environment variables to point the script to your Arrow checkout, for example:

export ARROW_DIR=path/to/arrow-clone
export EXAMPLE_DIR=$ARROW_DIR/cpp/examples/minimal_build
export ARROW_BUILD_DIR=$(pwd)/arrow-build
export EXAMPLE_BUILD_DIR=$(pwd)/example

./run_static.sh

On Windows, you can run run_static.bat from the command prompt with Visual Studio's command line tools enabled and CMake and ninja build in the path:

call run_static.bat

Static linking against system libraries

You can also use static libraries of Arrow's dependencies from the system. To run this configuration, set ARROW_DEPENDENCY_SOURCE=SYSTEM for run_static.sh. You can use docker compose for this too:

docker compose run --rm static-system-dependency