CopperSpice

CopperSpice is a set of individual libraries which can be used to develop cross platform software applications in C++. It is a totally open source project released under the LGPL V2.1 license and was initially derived from the Qt framework. Over the last several years CopperSpice has completely diverged, with a goal of providing a first class GUI library to unite the C++ community.

Our motivation for developing CopperSpice was to change the fundamental design and turn the existing framework into a set of libraries for C++ developers. We are accomplishing this by leveraging modern C++ functionality, new technology, and modern tooling. CopperSpice currently requires C++17 or newer.

You can use CopperSpice with any existing tool chain such as GCC, clang, or MSVC. A C++ program using the CopperSpice libraries can be developed using any editor such as VI, emacs, or Diamond and built using CMake from a shell command line. For an integrated environment Visual Studio or QtCreator can be used for development, building, testing, and deployment.

Quick Links

Philosophy / Mission Statement

Subscriptions (Support)

Conference Presentations

CopperSpice YouTube Channel

Journal / Blog

Style Guide

CopperSpice GitHub

DoxyPress GitHub

Libraries

CopperSpice consists of the following libraries which can be linked into any existing C++ application.


CsCore
Date/Time, Strings (UTF-8 & UTF-16), Containers (QVector, QList, QMap, QHash, QFlatMap, QStack ...)
File System, Locales, Time Zone, JSON, Muxtes, Pointers, Threads
CsGui
Dialogs, File Selectors, Fonts, Images, Layouts, Menus, Printing, Styles, Widgets (QCalendar, QCheckBox, QComboBox, QLineEdit, QPushButton, QTabWidget ...)
CsMultimedia
Audio, Camera, Video (recording and playback)
CsNetwork
TCP, HTTP, FTP, IPv6, DNS lookups, SSL, URL support
CsOpenGL
Rendering Context, Graphic Formats, Shader Compiler
CsSql
SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL ...
CsSvg
Render and Disply SVG files
CsVulkan
Vulkan Instance, Vulkan Surface, Vulkan Devices
CsWebKit
Web View, Web Page which can be embedded in your application
CsXml
DOM reading and writing XML files, XML Reader
CsXmlPatterns
Schema Validation, XQuery

  • Reflection / Meta Object Compiler
    • The Meta-Object Compiler is no longer required for generating reflection meta data in CopperSpice
    • Since moc is no longer required it was completely removed
    • All functionality originally provided by moc was replaced with compile time templates
    • CopperSpice automatically generates meta data for processing Signals/Slots and Introspection
    • Removal of moc simplifies the build process
    • A template class can inherit from QObject with no restrictions on data types
    • Complex data types can be used as signal or slot arguments, for example this is valid code in CopperSpice: QMap<QString, int>

  • Benefits of CopperSpice
    • Extensive use of modern C++ functionality
      • templates, variadic templates, variadic variable templates
      • lambda expressions
      • expression SFINAE
      • move semantics, rvalue references
      • override, noexcept
      • constexpr, constexpr if
      • decltype, type traits, tuple
      • threading model
      • strongly typed enums
      • requires clause, constraints
      • three-way comparison
    • Reimplemented all container classes
      • Composition is used to wrap the C++ standard library containers
        • QVector, QList, QStringList, QLinkedList, QSet, QStack, QQueue
        • QMap, QHash, QMultiMap, QMultiHash
      • Supports both the STL and Qt API
      • Implement QMultiHash and QMultiMap as separate classes from QHash and QMap
      • Reverse iterators
      • Removed copy on write semantics
      • Added QFlatMap
        • Ordered map which stores elements in contiguous memory as a sorted vector of pairs
        • Similar API to QMap

    • CopperSpice includes a majority of the Qt 5 classes
    • Improved CsNetwork support for OpenSSL
    • Support for TLS and SPDY added
    • Add support for SHA-2 and SHA-3
    • Reimplemented atomic support (QAtomicInt, QAtomicPointer) wrapping the C++ standard library functionality
    • Enhanced CopperSpice to use the STL algorithms rather than hand rolled algorithms
    • Removed support for obsolete platforms
    • QLocale classes refactored to use UTF-8 string classes
    • >Update codec classes to use UTF-8 string classes
    • High DPI support
    • Moved to Unicode 15, added support for new Harfbuzz for text shaping
    • Improved platform specific support
    • Redesign plugin system
    • QVariant redesign, removed unions in favor of type safe C++ constructs
    • Guard all debug output with CS_SHOW_DEBUG_* macros to easily enable/disable output

    • Integration of CsPointer
      • Improved compatibility with the standard library Smart Pointers
      • Add QSharedArrayPointer and QScopedArrayPointer
    • Integration of CsSignal
      • Improved thread aware Signal/Slot delivery
      • Increased efficiency while maintaining the full Signal/Slot API
      • Deadlocks in Signal/Slot processing have been eliminated
    • Integration of CsString
      • Use accurate storage to properly represent Unicode strings
      • Added new QString8 (UTF-8) and QString16 (UTF-16) classes
      • QString is synonymous with QString8
      • Moved various formatting methods to the new QStringParser class
      • Redesign QRegularExpression using iterators to handle UTF-8 and UTF-16
      • Add QStringView class which works correctly with the CopperSpice QString classes
      • Remove string surrogate checking since it is not required with UTF-8 / UTF-16 encoding
      • Added support for char8_t

    • Additional Items
      • All CopperSpice libraries are built using CMake
      • Extensive use of the Catch Unit Test System
      • Release binary distribution of MinGW 10, MinGW 11, MinGW 12, MinGW 13, and MinGW 14
      • Redesign CMake build files to locate system versions of CsLibGuarded, CsPointer, CsSignal, and CsString instead of using the default bundled version

Original Libraries (BSD License)

The following are standalone C++ libraries which can be linked into any existing C++ application.


CsCrypto
Provides a common interface to call existing cryptography libraries. It is designed to detect common cryptographic errors at compile time by using C++ type checking with the intention of preventing security vulnerabilities.
CsLibGuarded
Encapsulates a mutex with the corresponding data. There are several different classes available to support multi-threading allowing developers to choose the most appropriate solution. This library is used in CsSignal and CopperSpice.
CsPaint
Provides a higher level API for 3D, 2D, and text rendering on the GPU using the Vulkan graphics API.
CsPointer
A collection of smart pointers which extend the C++ Standard Library. Full implemenation of an intrusive pointer class and a class to manage nodes in a parent/child relationship.
CsSignal
This library is used to provide thread aware Signal/Slot delivery and is used by CopperSpice.
CsString
Unicode aware string library. This library is used by CopperSpice to support UTF-8 (QString8) and UTF-16 (QString16).

Converting to CopperSpice

The process of converting to CopperSpice is straight forward and the team is available for assistance. The header files in your Qt application need to be converted one time and this can be done quickly using our PepperMill utility. The build files in your project should be converted to use CMake. For examples on writing your build files refer to our KitchenSink demo program, Diamond Editor application and our "CopperSpice Overview" Documentation.

Getting Started

The "CopperSpice Overview" documentation includes information about how to build CopperSpice from source, where to download prebuilt binary files, setting up a project using CopperSpice, and how to migrate from Qt to CopperSpice.  CS Overview Documentation

Contacting CopperSpice

  • Ask questions or request a feature on our GitHub repository  Github
  • Join a discussion on our forum  Forum
  • Email the co-founders: info [at] copperspice.com