conan

Conan is an open-source package manager built for C and C++ developers. A package manager is a tool that automates the process of finding, downloading, and installing the libraries and dependencies that a software project needs. C and C++ are programming languages commonly used for systems software, games, and performance-sensitive applications, and managing their dependencies has historically been much harder than in languages like Python or JavaScript. Conan addresses that gap.

One of Conan's distinguishing characteristics is that it is fully decentralized. Rather than relying on a single central registry, teams can host their own package servers privately, or use services like Artifactory. Packages can include pre-compiled binaries, which means you download ready-to-run code rather than having to compile everything yourself from source. This can save significant time in both local development and in automated build pipelines.

Conan works across platforms: Linux, macOS, and Windows are all supported, including more specialized environments like embedded systems, cross-compilation setups, and Docker containers. It integrates with the major C++ build systems, including CMake, MSBuild, Makefiles, and Meson, so you do not need to change your existing build setup to start using it.

The tool is configured through Python-based recipe files, which describe how a package should be built and what it depends on. This makes it extensible: you can customize behavior to fit unusual project requirements. ConanCenter is the main public repository of community-maintained packages.

Conan has been in production use at many companies since its 1.0 release, and the project commits to not breaking existing package recipes or documented behavior across stable releases. The project is maintained under the MIT license, meaning it is free to use and modify. Developer and maintainer documentation is in the repository itself; end-user documentation lives at docs.conan.io.