Using 3rd Party C files with C Lion, a beginner perspective - c

Question

I am in despair for a simple explanation to a simple problem.
I made a program in java that I need to recode in C for performance reasons. So I learned how to program in C. The problem is that C standard libraries do not contain collections (why????) such as a hashtables, treesets, etc. So I found this: https://github.com/srdja/Collections-C.
I use CLion on windows, I know well about coding but NOTHING about compiling, CMake, Linux, etc. My question is: I want to use those external source files my project, why is that so hard ? The tutorial on the link provided above tells me to use Linux command lines and stuff that I don't understand. Online I find stuff about telling me to add commands into CMakelist, none of these work for diverse reasons. I can't even copy all the .c and .h into my project because "they are not part of the project". So can anyone tell me how to make this simple code work ?
#include <stdio.h>
#include "hashtable.h"
int main() {
Hashtable *table;
hashtable_new(&table); //this is a function that creates the new hashtable in the source code of Collections-C
return 0;
}
By the way, because I think it's the same problem, how can I have subdirectories in my project so that I can put my header files away to keep the project tree tidy? I tried to add add_subdirectories($/include) to my CMakelist.txt
I am expecting people telling me that there are many similar questions already, but none of those I found is clear to me.
Thank you if you have the patience to explain this to me.
Henri

Answer 1

This is for C++, but it should work for your C code. In this example, it's defining where to find the OpenSSL and Google Test headers, and how to link with the Google Test library and the OpenSSL library (which is in C, as it turns out):
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5)
project(stackexample)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)
find_library(GTest required)
include_directories(${GTEST_INCLUDE_DIRS} /usr/include/openssl)
set(
SOURCE_FILES
StackExample.cpp
StackExample.h
)
add_executable(stackexample ${SOURCE_FILES})
target_link_libraries(stackexample -lgtest -lssl -lcrypto pthread)
Collections-C appears to have an installer, so you would
List the path to its installed headers in the include_directories line
List its installed library in the target_link_libraries line

Answer 2

The solution was to build the library then do stuff with CMake. I followed this tutorial.