Alternatives

Runtime Compiled C & C++ Solutions

We believe RCC++ is a good overall standard C++ approach to runtime editing of code which is easy to use, available across a number of platforms and relatively easy to port. There are however a few alternative implementations for compiling C++ at runtime.

Commercial solutions

• Recode; a Visual Studio plugin developed by an ex-Crytek colleague.
• Live++ from Stefan Reinalter a generic tool for live coding of C/C++ applications is available, currently supporting the MSVC toolchain and the lld linker. Live++ ships with UE 4.22 and is free for all UE4 developers.
• Hot Reload from Unreal Engine 4.
• The JUCE C++ cross-platform framework has a project management tool called The Projucer which has an Instant Compilation Environment engine (the ICE engine).
• C++ Hot Reload advertises a real time multi-platform tool for PC/Mac, iOS, Android, embedded devices and consoles.
• Visual Studio has Edit & Continue, but this has issues with doing much of any reasonable scope.

Open Source Libraries

• RCC++ (you're here).
• blink - A tool which allows you to edit source code of any C++ project live at runtime BSD- 2-clause licensed from Patrick Mours
• cr.h A Simple C Hot Reload library open source C implementation from Danny Grein, with code on Github
• There's a plugin for Visual Studio called Alcantarea, now open source on Github.
• The author of Alcantarea, @i-saint, has an open source dynamic patcher for Runtime C++ editing https://github.com/i-saint/DynamicPatcher
• An RCC++ implementation has been added to the Urho3D permissively licensed game engine on the RCCpp branch.
• Runtime Compiled C++ in Maya tutorial and code from Siew Yi Liang shows how to develop a live C++ coding Maya plugin.
• A simple single file live code project exists for openFrameworks https://github.com/mazbox/livecode-cplusplus
• CToy, an interactive C99 coding environment based on TCC.
• CERN has a JIT C++ compiler made using Clang/LLCM called Cling.
• Project Jupyter, a multi-language interactive computing environment now has an interactive C++ workflow based on Cling.
• Read-Compile-Run-Loop - tiny and powerful interactive C++ compiler (REPL)
• Qt Interactive Coding - a simple cross-platform library to automate the process of compilation and execution of C++ code from within a running Qt application from @martinky
• Interactive C a simple interactive programming example in C.
• jet-live - c++ hot code reload for linux and macos
• Project Island - Project Island is an experimental Vulkan renderer/proto-engine for Linux, written in C/C++. Island has hot-reloading for c/c++ application code, GLSL shader code, and renderer's own core modules.

Blog posts

• Don Williamson mentions that Splinter Cell had live editing of C++ code in this article on reflection.
• the Bitsquid engine has hot reloading of game dlls.
• The Molecular Engine has implemented a similar system.
• Casey Muratori's Handmade Hero's project shows a simple and powerful method for runtime compilation of C code (which should also work with C++) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrUSrVvB21c.
• Chris Wellons has been blogged about both using libraries for hotloading of C on Linux, code on Github and hotpatching C functions.
• Michael Chourdakis wrote and article on Code Project about HotPatching.
• Randy Gaul discusses Runtime Compiled C++ with regards to writing game engines, with a working example on Github.
• Tomasz Stachowiak‏ discusses how to directly load .obj files on Windows, and how to manually link DLLs at runtime
• Niklas Gray discusses how The Machinery handles hot reloading of plugin DLLs.
• Timothy Lottes posted outlining his current Runtime Edit Reload Continue process.
• Tim Gfrerer author of Project Island experimental Vulkan renderer/proto-engine with hot reloading wrote about [Callbacks and Hot-Reloading: Must JMP through extra hoops].(https://poniesandlight.co.uk/reflect/callbacks_and_hot_reloading/)

Other

• Easy::jit is a just-in-time compiler for C++ using LLVM by Juan Manuel Martinez Caamaño jmmartinez and Serge Guelton (serge_sans_paille). This doesn't allow full source changes, only the ability to compile in parameters to functions.