conanfile.txt

Sections

[requires]

List of requirements, specifing the full reference.

[requires]
Poco/1.9.0@pocoproject/stable
zlib/1.2.11@conan/stable

Also support version ranges:

[requires]
Poco/[>1.0,<1.8]@pocoproject/stable
zlib/1.2.11@conan/stable

[build_requires]

List of build requirements, specifing the full reference.

[build_requires]
7z_installer/1.0@conan/stable

Also support version ranges

In practice the [build_requires] will be always installed, the same as [requires]. Installing from a conanfile.txt means that something is going to be built, so the build requirements are indeed needed.

Still, it is useful and conceptually cleaner to have them in separate sections, so users of this conanfile.txt might quickly identify some dev-tools that they have already installed on their machine, differentiating them from the required libraries to link with.

[generators]

List of generators

[requires]
Poco/1.9.0@pocoproject/stable
zlib/1.2.11@conan/stable

[generators]
xcode
cmake
qmake

[options]

List of options. Always specifying package_name:option = Value

[requires]
Poco/1.9.0@pocoproject/stable
zlib/1.2.11@conan/stable

[generators]
cmake

[options]
Poco:shared=True
OpenSSL:shared=True

[imports]

List of files to be imported to a local directory. Read more: imports.

[requires]
Poco/1.9.0@pocoproject/stable
zlib/1.2.11@conan/stable

[generators]
cmake

[options]
Poco:shared=True
OpenSSL:shared=True

[imports]
bin, *.dll -> ./bin # Copies all dll files from packages bin folder to my local "bin" folder
lib, *.dylib* -> ./bin # Copies all dylib files from packages lib folder to my local "bin" folder

The first item is the subfolder of the packages (could be the root “.” one), the second is the pattern to match. Both relate to the local cache. The third (after the arrow) item, is the destination folder, living in user space, not in the local cache.

The [imports] section also support the same arguments as the equivalent imports() method in conanfile.py, separated with an @.

root_package (Optional, Defaulted to all packages in deps): fnmatch pattern of the package name (“OpenCV”, “Boost”) from which files will be copied.
folder: (Optional, Defaulted to False). If enabled, it will copy the files from the local cache to a subfolder named as the package containing the files. Useful to avoid conflicting imports of files with the same name (e.g. License).
ignore_case: (Optional, Defaulted to False). If enabled will do a case-insensitive pattern matching.
excludes: (Optional, Defaulted to None). Allows defining a list of patterns (even a single pattern) to be excluded from the copy, even if they match the main pattern.
keep_path (Optional, Defaulted to True): Means if you want to keep the relative path when you copy the files from the src folder to the dst one. Useful to ignore (keep_path=False) path of library.dll files in the package it is imported from.

Example to collect license files from dependencies, into a licenses folder, excluding (just an example) html and jpeg files:

[imports]
., license* -> ./licenses @ folder=True, ignore_case=True, excludes=*.html *.jpeg