Four Google open source tools on Google Code

Posted by Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

Over the past two years, Google has released several infrastructure tools as open source software.

Today we're pleased to host them on Google Code project hosting.

These tools have made life easier for us in many ways over the years and are found in many (for some of these, all) Google projects.

gflags: Commandline flags module for C++.

At Google we needed a replacement for getopt() that was both simpler to use and more powerful. The result, gflags, has stood the test of time, being usable for both large projects with many internal libraries, each of which like to have command-line flags; and straightforward enough to be the preferred solution on small projects as well.

This package has implementations in both C++ and Python, allowing you to use a similar API in the different worlds.

Another nice feature is that you can run a program, gflags2man, that creates a man page for any executable written using gflags.

For more information, please read the documentation.

perftools: Fast, mutli-threaded malloc() and nifty performance analysis tools.

The perftools package is a collection of a high-performance multi-threaded malloc() implementation, plus some pretty nifty performance analysis tools. TC Malloc has been out in the wild for quite some time, with many other projects using it to get that little bit extra performance.

Along with TC Malloc, perftools also contains a Heap Checker, Heap Profiler, and a CPU Profiler.

Take a peek at an overview of the Google Performance Tools.

sparsehash: An extremely memory-efficient hash_map implementation.

At Google, we really care about performance. The SparseHash package contains several hash-map implementations, including one implementation that optimizes for space, and another that optimizes for speed. If you are excited about an extremely memory-efficient hash_map implementation -- with only 2 bits/entry overhead! -- replace that hash_map in your code with a sparse_hash_map. Alternately, try a dense_hash_map for a hashtable implementation that uses more memory in exchange for very fast performance.

Learn how to use the hash_map implementations.

ctemplate: A simple but powerful template language for C++.

Last, but not least, we have CTemplate; a simple but powerful template language for C++ that emphasizes separating logic from presentation.

Look at some examples of using the template language.