This is the tracking issue for our initial high-level C++ SDK

Goals

• High-level API
• Easy to use
• Easy to install
• For developers on their own machines

Non-goals

• C
• Embedded machines
• Header-only

We will save this for later.

Approach

Low-level C SDK

We wrap our Rust SDK with a minimal set of functions for:

• init
• connect, save
• log a DataRow

The Rust side is responsible for:

• Batching
• TCP communication
• Streaming logs to disk

Low-level C++ SDK

Basically a C++-friendly wrapper around the C SDK

Code-generated classes

• Code-gen for C++ #2647

We use re_types (#2241) to generate classes for datatypes, components, and archetypes.

These are converted to Arrow-messages using the official Arrow C++ SDK.

Integrations

Finally, we have opt-in integrations with various libraries such as:

• OpenCV
• Eigen
• …

Distribution

The C SDK will consist of a single rerun.h header, and then a dynamic and/or static library of the rerun_c crate.

The C++ SDK will have a CMakelists.txt for ease of use in cmake build systems. We can maybe set up a system where cmake downloads and install the Rerun C++ SDK for users, including dependencies (Arrow).

TODO

• Code-gen for C++ #2647
• Check C++ on CI #2662
• Add C++ roundtrip tests (compare data output with Python & Rust SDKs) #2797
• Support manual extensions to generated types #2798
• What C++ version to target
  • The Arrow C++ SDK requires C++17, but that should only affect the version for building our C++ SDK binaries
• Figure out the API
• Generate API docs
• High level examples
• Write high-level C++ docs
• Write C++ examples
• Library distribution
• …