Understanding JUCE modules - where are the include files?

General JUCE discussion
1

I’m rather new to JUCE and I’m trying to understand the magic of how the cross-platform approach works.

While digging through the files, I found a number of files that don’t have any #include directives e.g. juce_opengl/opengl/juce_OpenGLContext.h. The class uses a number of definitions of other JUCE classes and I’m wondering where they’re coming from.

I also can’t find any precompiled header file in my Xcode project.

Can anyone enlighten me?

2

All the JUCE modules have a header file of the same name in the top level of the directory. That’s where all the important including is done.

See this:

3

Thanks for your reply! I did read this file already but it doesn’t explain to me why e.g. the juce_OpenGLContext.h knows all the types it uses. The class definition uses many other classes without including their header files.

The module header includes the juce_OpenGLContext.h file which explains why including the module header is sufficient if I want to use any of the OpenGL classes.

Take this snippet (I removed the comments for better readability):

namespace juce
{
class OpenGLTexture;

class JUCE_API  OpenGLContext
{
public:
    OpenGLContext();

    /** Destructor. */
    ~OpenGLContext();

    void setRenderer (OpenGLRenderer*) noexcept;
    ...

Where does the OpenGLRenderer definition come from?

4

To use JUCE modules you only ever include the main header file, so you can rely upon the order of includes done there. By the time we include opengl/juce_OpenGLContext.h we’ve already included other OpenGL headers.

You can think of inclusion as having the contents of #included files pasted into the file they are included in. So by the time we reach juce_OpenGLContext.h all the definitions are available in the same compilation unit.

5

Ok, I get it now… I was so confused that I completely forgot that #include doesn’t do anything “magic” but copying the included file’s content at the #include destination.

That now also explains why the JUCE modules are only referenced and not added to the target.

Thanks for your explanation!