Documentation

Getting started

This walks you from an empty directory to a running C/C++ project in about a minute. You’ll need clang installed and the deft binary on your PATH. Not sure your setup is good? Run deft doctor any time — it checks the whole toolchain for you.

1. Start a project

No build script to hand-write. Make a directory and initialize it:

mkdir my_project
cd my_project

# Defaults to a C++ executable
deft init

Want a C project or a static library instead? Use deft init --c or deft init --lib.

2. The layout

deft borrows Cargo’s idea of a fixed, predictable layout, so there’s nothing to configure about where files go. A fresh project looks like this:

my_project/
├── src/
│   └── main.cpp  # the entry point for a C++ executable
├── .gitignore    # generated, ignores target/
└── deft.toml     # the manifest

And deft.toml starts small:

[package]
name = "my_project"
version = "0.2.0"

[profile.cpp]
standard = "c++20"
warnings = ["all", "extra"]
optimization = "0"

One language per package. deft won’t let a package mix C and C++. Drop a .c file into a C++ package and the build stops with a LayoutViolation rather than quietly compiling it with the wrong flags. (Building a legacy tree that doesn’t fit? See the manifest guide’s Legacy Support section.)

3. Build

From the project root:

deft build

deft finds every source under src/, spreads the work across an internal thread pool, and calls the compiler. One nice consequence of how it’s built: a successful build never pays for environment checks — deft only runs its doctor diagnostics when a build actually fails, so the happy path stays lean.

Everything it produces lands in target/:

• Unix: target/debug/my_project
• Windows: target/debug/my_project.exe

For an optimized build — -O3, no debug symbols, -DNDEBUG — add --release:

deft build --release

4. Run

Build and run in one step:

deft run

Need to pass arguments to your program rather than to deft? Put them after --:

deft run -- --port 8080 --verbose

Everything after -- is forwarded to your executable untouched.

5. Add a dependency

deft pulls dependencies without git submodules or vendored headers. Add a GitHub shorthand to the [dependencies] table:

[dependencies]
"gh:user/network_lib" = "1.5"

Then fetch and lock it:

deft update

Under the hood, deft clones the repo into its global cache (~/.deft/cache/), resolves the tag you asked for, and pins the exact commit in deft.lock so the build is the same on every machine. From the next deft build on, the dependency is compiled to a static library (.a / .lib) and linked into your binary automatically.

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