This blog post summarizes changes to the vcpkg package manager as part of the 2024.01.12 release and changes to vcpkg documentation throughout January. This month’s vcpkg release was mainly minor bug fixes, while several new documentation articles were added.

Some stats for this period:

• There are now 2,377 total libraries available in the vcpkg public registry.
• 15 new ports were added to the open-source registry. A port is a versioned recipe for building a package from source, such as a C or C++ library.
• 227 updates were made to existing ports. As always, we validate each change to a port by building all other ports that depend on or are depended by the library that is being updated for our nine main triplets.
• 25 contributors submitted PRs, issues, or participated in discussions in the main repo.
• The main vcpkg repo has over 5,900 forks and 20,700 stars on GitHub.

vcpkg changelog (2024.01.12 release)

• Arm artifact registry updated to new default URL (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-tool#1317, thanks @mcgordonite!).
• Various minor bugfixes.

Documentation changes

• New articles:
  • Comparing vcpkg with system package managers: vcpkg is designed to work side-by-side with system package managers. Learn about situations when a system package manager is more or less beneficial compared to vcpkg.
  • Supported hosts: Review which host platforms and architectures vcpkg can run on and what vcpkg’s level of support for each is.
  • Versioning troubleshooting guide: Discover solutions to common problems encountered while trying to manage port versions and features.
  • Troubleshoot build failures in vcpkg ports: Discover ways to resolve build failures with vcpkg ports.
  • Software Bill of Materials generation: Learn about vcpkg support for Software Bill of Materials (SBOM). SBOM is a popular specification that tracks important information used to build a package, such as source origin, and aims to provide package consumers with software transparency and integrity.
• Added documentation for X_VCPKG_NUGET_PREFIX environment variable.
• Various minor improvements throughout the docs.

If you have any suggestions for our documentation, feel free to submit an issue in our GitHub repo. You can also leave feedback for existing articles by using the Feedback button at the bottom of an article and choosing “This page”.

Total ports available for tested triplets

While vcpkg supports a much larger variety of target platforms and architectures (as community triplets), the list above is validated exhaustively to ensure updated ports don’t break other ports in the catalog.

Thank you to our contributors

vcpkg couldn’t be where it is today without contributions from our open-source community. Thank you for your continued support! The following people contributed to the vcpkg, vcpkg-tool, or vcpkg-docs repos in this release:

• dg0yt (26 commits)
• autoantwort (6 commits)
• RT2Code (5 commits)
• Thomas1664 (5 commits)
• omarhogni (4 commits)
• m-kuhn (3 commits)
• AenBleidd (3 commits)
• Neumann-A (3 commits)
• eao197 (2 commits)
• xiaozhuai (2 commits)
• jiayuehua (2 commits)
• kobykahane (1 commit)
• DragonJoker (1 commit)
• RealTimeChris (1 commit)
• Tradias (1 commit)
• daschuer (1 commit)
• SchaichAlonso (1 commit)
• luncliff (1 commit)
• chausner (1 commit)
• mcgordonite (1 commit)
• charlespina (1 commit)
• cmello (1 commit)

Is your company looking for a better C/C++ dependency management experience?

We are partnering with companies to help them get started with vcpkg and overcome any initial hurdles. We have also been making product and documentation changes based on feedback we receive from these partnerships. If you are interested in trying out vcpkg or just have some thoughts to share with us, feel free to reach out at vcpkg@microsoft.com.

Learn more

You can find the full 2024.01.12 release notes on GitHub for the main repo. Recent updates to the vcpkg tool can be viewed on the vcpkg-tool Releases page. To contribute to documentation, visit the vcpkg-docs repo. If you’re new to vcpkg or curious about how a package manager can make your life easier as a C/C++ developer, check out the vcpkg website – vcpkg.io.

If you would like to contribute to vcpkg and its library catalog, or want to give us feedback on anything, check out our GitHub repo. Please report bugs or request updates to ports in our issue tracker or join more general discussion in our discussion forum.