This blog post summarizes changes to the vcpkg package manager as part of the 2024.07.12 release, 2024-07-10 tool release, as well as changes to vcpkg documentation throughout July. This month’s release includes some minor changes to output, bug fixes, and documentation improvements.

Some stats for this period:

• There are now 2,457 total ports available in the vcpkg public registry. A port is a versioned recipe for building a package from source, such as a C or C++ library.
• 17 new ports were added to the open-source registry.
• 315 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 13 main triplets.
• 28 contributors submitted PRs, issues, or participated in discussions in the main repo.
• The main vcpkg repo has over 6,200 forks and 22,400 stars on GitHub.

vcpkg changelog (2024.07.12 release)

The following notable changes were made in this release:

• Added VxWorks as a platform expression (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-tool#1427, thanks @Neumann-A!).
• vcpkg now uses curl to download on Windows when proxy authentication is required (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-tool#1434, thanks @sylvlecl!).
• vcpkg now raises errors for certain invalid overlay port manifests: malformed JSON, missing “name” field, and missing “version:” field (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-tool#1435, thanks @dg0yt!).
• Made error message clearer when attempting to download sources from an invalid URL when installing a port (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-tool#1411, thanks @autoantwort!).
• Improved asset caching output to make it clear if it is enabled and what specific actions vcpkg is taking (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-tool#1409).
• Bug fixes:
  • Fixed x-update-baseline incorrectly updating the baseline field when the registry is configured with a reference. The correct behavior is to use the latest commit of the reference branch when set (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-tool#1414).
  • Fixed post-build check that forbids putting absolute paths in installed packages to also check .csh and .pl files for these paths (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-tool#1426, thanks @dg0yt!).
  • Fixed incorrect vcpkg export help message when specifying an output directory (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-tool#1450, thanks @myd7349!).
  • Fixed vcpkg.exe sometimes failing to determine the version of a downloaded nuget.exe (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-tool#1451, thanks @kazssym!).

Documentation changes

• Added docs for AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN in vcpkg_from_gitlab (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-docs#328, thanks, @autoantwort!).
• Documented STRIP_TRAILING_WHITESPACE for the vcpkg_execute_required_process function (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-docs#348).
• Documented VCPKG_USE_HOST_TOOLS CMake option in Host dependencies article (PR: Microsoft/vcpkg-docs#306).
• Clarified level of support for different Unix/Linux distros in Supported hosts article (PRs: Microsoft/vcpkg-docs#339, Microsoft/vcpkg-docs#345, Microsoft/vcpkg-docs#341, thanks @SchaichAlonso!).
• Other typo and bug fixes (thanks @autoantwort, @Suisse00, and @kwsp!).

If you have any suggestions for our documentation, please submit an issue in our GitHub repo or see the box at the bottom of a particular article.

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)
• c8ef (21 commits)
• autoantwort (19 commits)
• Neumann-A (7 commits)
• miyanyan (6 commits)
• nlogozzo (5 commits)
• m-kuhn (4 commits)
• talregev (4 commits)
• xiaozhuai (4 commits)
• waywardmonkeys (3 commits)
• RT2Code (2 commits)
• myd7349 (3 commits)
• MehdiChinoune (1 commit)
• omarhogni (1 commit)
• moritz-h (1 commit)
• alagoutte (1 commit)
• Tradias (1 commit)
• past-due (1 commit)
• AenBleidd (1 commit)
• coryan (1 commit)
• SchaichAlonso (1 commit)
• Suisse00 (1 commit)
• kwsp (1 commit)

Learn more

You can find the full 2024.07.12 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 vcpkg 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.