Customizing settings

There is a file in <userhome>/.conan/settings.yml that contains a default definition of the allowed settings values for Conan package recipes. It looks like:

os:
    Windows:
        subsystem: [None, cygwin, msys, msys2, wsl]
    Linux:
    Macos:
        version: [None, "10.6", "10.7", "10.8", "10.9", "10.10", "10.11", "10.12", "10.13", "10.14"]
    Android:
        api_level: ANY
    iOS:
        version: ["7.0", "7.1", "8.0", "8.1", "8.2", "8.3", "9.0", "9.1", "9.2", "9.3", "10.0", "10.1", "10.2", "10.3", "11.0", "11.1", "11.2", "11.3", "11.4", "12.0", "12.1"]
    watchOS:
        version: ["4.0", "4.1", "4.2", "4.3", "5.0", "5.1"]
    FreeBSD:
    SunOS:
    Emscripten:
arch: [x86, x86_64, ppc32, ppc64le, ppc64, armv4, armv4i, armv5el, armv5hf, armv6, armv7, armv7hf, armv7s, armv7k, armv8, armv8_32, armv8.3, sparc, sparcv9, mips, mips64, avr, s390, s390x, asm.js, wasm]
compiler:
    gcc:
        version: ["4.1", "4.4", "4.5", "4.6", "4.7", "4.8", "4.9",
                "5", "5.1", "5.2", "5.3", "5.4", "5.5",
                "6", "6.1", "6.2", "6.3", "6.4",
                "7", "7.1", "7.2", "7.3",
                "8", "8.1", "8.2",
                "9"]
        libcxx: [libstdc++, libstdc++11]
        threads: [None, posix, win32] #  Windows MinGW
        exception: [None, dwarf2, sjlj, seh] # Windows MinGW
        cppstd: [None, 98, gnu98, 11, gnu11, 14, gnu14, 17, gnu17, 20, gnu20]
    Visual Studio:
        runtime: [MD, MT, MTd, MDd]
        version: ["8", "9", "10", "11", "12", "14", "15", "16"]
        toolset: [None, v90, v100, v110, v110_xp, v120, v120_xp,
                v140, v140_xp, v140_clang_c2, LLVM-vs2012, LLVM-vs2012_xp,
                LLVM-vs2013, LLVM-vs2013_xp, LLVM-vs2014, LLVM-vs2014_xp,
                LLVM-vs2017, LLVM-vs2017_xp, v141, v141_xp, v141_clang_c2, v142]
        cppstd: [None, 14, 17, 20]

This are the default settings and values. They are a common syntax and notation for having package binary IDs that are common to all developers. They are also used for validation, for example if you write in a profile [settings] something like os=Windos (note the typo), then it will raise an error, telling you it is not a recognized os and offering a list of available os. Also, note how the sub-settings are different for different platforms, for example the standard C++ library (compiler.libcxx) exists for the gcc compiler, but not for Visual Studio compiler. And in the same way, Visual Studio has a runtime sub-setting that is missing in gcc. Trying to incorrectly use or define these sub-settings in the wrong compiler will also raise an error.

These settings are good for defining a base for Open Source packages, and for a large number of mainstream configurations. But it is likely that you might need finer detail of definition of the binaries that are being created.

For example, it is possible that you are managing binaries for older Linux distros, like RHEL 6, or old Centos, besides other modern distributions. The problem is that the binaries compiled for modern distributions will not work (will not be binary compatible, or ABI incompatible) in those older distributions, mainly because of different versions of glibc. We would need a way to model the differences of the binaries for those platforms. Check out the section Deployment challenges which explains mentioned situation in detail.

Adding new settings

It is possible to add new settings at the root of the settings.yml file, something like:

os:
    Windows:
        subsystem: [None, cygwin, msys, msys2, wsl]
distro: [None, RHEL6, CentOS, Debian]

If we want to create different binaries from our recipes defining this new setting, we would need to add to our recipes that:

class Pkg(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "compiler", "build_type", "arch", "distro"

The value None allows for not defining it (which would be a default value, valid for all other distros). It is possible to define values for it in the profiles:

[settings]
os = "Linux"
distro = "CentOS"
compiler = "gcc"

And use their values to affect our build if desired:

class Pkg(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "compiler", "build_type", "arch", "distro"

    def build(self):
        cmake = CMake(self)
        if self.settings.distro == "CentOS":
            cmake.definitions["SOME_CENTOS_FLAG"] = "Some CentOS Value"
            ...

Adding new sub-settings

The above approach requires modification to all recipes to take it into account. It is also possible to define kind of incompatible settings, like os=Windows and distro=CentOS. While adding new settings is totally possible, it might make more sense for other cases, but for this example it is more adequate to add it as above subsetting of the Linux OS:

os:
    Windows:
        subsystem: [None, cygwin, msys, msys2, wsl]
    Linux:
        distro: [None, RHEL6, CentOS, Debian]

With this definition we could define our profiles as:

[settings]
os = "Linux"
os.distro = "CentOS"
compiler = "gcc"

And any attempt to define os.distro for another os value rather than Linux will raise an error.

As this is a subsetting, it will be automatically taken into account in all recipes that declare an os setting. Note that having a value of distro=None possible is important if you want to keep previously created binaries, otherwise you would be forcing to always define a specific distro value, and binaries created without this subsetting, won’t be usable anymore.

The sub-setting can also be accessed from recipes:

class Pkg(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "compiler", "build_type", "arch"  # Note, no "distro" defined here

    def build(self):
        cmake = CMake(self)
        if self.settings.os == "Linux" and self.settings.os.distro == "CentOS":
            cmake.definitions["SOME_CENTOS_FLAG"] = "Some CentOS Value"

Add new values

In the same way we have added a new distro subsetting, it is possible to add new values to existing settings and subsettings. For example, if some compiler version is not present in the range of accepted values, you can add those new values.

You can also add a completely new compiler:

os:
    Windows:
        subsystem: [None, cygwin, msys, msys2, wsl]
   ...
compiler:
    gcc:
        ...
    mycompiler:
        version: [1.1, 1.2]
    Visual Studio:

This works as the above regarding profiles, and the way they can be accessed from recipes. The main issue with custom compilers is that the builtin build helpers, like CMake, MSBuild, etc, internally contains code that will check for those values. For example, the MSBuild build helper will only know how to manage the Visual Studio setting and sub-settings, but not the new compiler. For those cases, custom logic can be implemented in the recipes:

class Pkg(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "compiler", "build_type", "arch"

    def build(self):
        if self.settings.compiler == "mycompiler":
            my_custom_compile = ["some", "--flags", "for", "--my=compiler"]
            self.run(["mycompiler", "."] + my_custom_compile)

Note

You can also remove items from settings.yml file. You can remove compilers, OS, architectures, etc. Do that only in the case you really want to protect against creation of binaries for other platforms other than your main supported ones. In the general case, you can leave them, the binary configurations are managed in profiles, and you want to define your supported configurations in profiles, not by restricting the settings.yml

Note

If you customize your settings.yml, you can share, distribute and sync this configuration with your team and CI machines with the conan config install command.