conan

What it is and what it does

Conan is a package manager designed for C and C++ developers that handles dependency resolution, binary artifact management, and build system integration. It runs as a Python application and coordinates the download, configuration, and compilation of C/C++ libraries across different platforms and architectures, supporting cross-compilation and embedded systems.

The tool is fully decentralized—users can host packages on private servers or use public repositories like ConanCenter—and integrates with major build systems (CMake, MSBuild, Makefiles, Meson). Its Python-based recipe system allows customization of how packages are built and configured. It has been in production use since 1.0 with a commitment to backward compatibility.

Use it for:

• Manage C/C++ library dependencies in cross-platform projects targeting Linux, Windows, macOS, and embedded systems.
• Create and distribute binary artifacts for different configurations without recompiling on each target platform.
• Integrate third-party C/C++ libraries into CMake or other build systems with automatic dependency resolution.
• Set up private package repositories for proprietary C/C++ code within an organization.
• Automate CI/CD pipelines that build and test C/C++ projects across multiple platforms and architectures.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Conan is a decentralized, open-source package manager for C and C++ that manages binaries, dependencies, and build system integration across platforms including Linux, macOS, Windows, and embedded systems.

Yes. Conan is production-stable, actively maintained, permissively licensed, and widely adopted (top 5000 PyPI packages). It has low install friction and no known vulnerabilities. Install it if you manage C/C++ dependencies across multiple platforms or need decentralized binary package distribution.

Install

conan on PyPI

pip install conan

uv add conan

poetry add conan

Installing conan

Before you install

Low install friction with a pure Python wheel distribution and nine common runtime dependencies (requests, urllib3, colorama, PyYAML, patch-ng, fasteners, Jinja2, python-dateutil, distro). Actively maintained with a release 10 days old and 9480 GitHub stars.

License in practice

MIT license (permissive) allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions, making it suitable for both open-source and proprietary C/C++ projects.

Quickstart

pip install conan
conan --help
conan install .

Requires Python 3.7 or later; C/C++ build tools (CMake, compiler, etc.) are needed for actual package building and compilation.

Verify before relying

• Whether the package manager integrates with specific proprietary build systems beyond those documented.
• Performance characteristics when managing large dependency graphs or monorepos.
• Support for specific embedded platforms or cross-compilation targets beyond the general claim.

Package facts

Evidence: conan-2.31.2-py3-none-any.whl

Keywords: C/C++, package, libraries, developer, manager, dependency, tool, c, c++, cpp

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