CFLite

What is it? CoreFoundation is a cross platform set of classes that handle international text (unicode + any conversions + search & replace), plist & xml parsing & container classes, with i/o (memory, file, network, virtual device), structured data management of said containers (can wrap with STL): dictionaries (maps), arrays (lists of any kind), sets, and all primitive data types plus calendars, dates, locales, etc. This from the CFLite page:

CF provides the fundamental C data types (for example, String, Dictionary, Array, Data and Number) as well as the essential services (such as plug-ins, URL handling and networking) ... [it] provides convenient facilities for importing and exporting these types as part of a rich, flexible data structure known as a property list (a kind of XML).

The thing is so blindingly useful for managing preferences, API parameter lists, creating, storing, sending and receiving files or data via the web, it makes many things so easy it's a wonder more people aren't using it. Oh, i know why, nobody's made an easy way to get it going on windows. Sure they *say* "it's open source, just compile it on windows"? Well, it's not quite that easy, actually. So i'm going to make it easy for you to use this on Windows, so now you can really write cross platform code to manage your core data types and the ability to easily serialize huge data structures for streaming to / from a file, within memory, or over the web.

The "Easy" Way

Just go download and install Safari for windows. Guess what? it comes with CoreFoundation. (Oh, and CFNetwork and CoreGraphics, which kicks an amazing amount of ass by the way). Now install JUST the CF headers as described here. Now drag CF and it's constituent .dlls (most of the other dlls in the Safari folder) and drop them into your build folder (where your exe is going to be). Add CF.dll to your project, add the search paths to the CF folder for the headers. You should be good to go.

The Hard Way

Build the thing your self. Separate page for that, go here.