1 files changed, 88 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/src/arrow/cpp/examples/minimal_build/README.md b/src/arrow/cpp/examples/minimal_build/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..9f889f6ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/arrow/cpp/examples/minimal_build/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
+<!---
+  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
+  or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
+  distributed with this work for additional information
+  regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
+  to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
+  "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
+  with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+
+    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
+  software distributed under the License is distributed on an
+  "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
+  KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
+  specific language governing permissions and limitations
+  under the License.
+-->
+
+# Minimal C++ build example
+
+This directory showcases a minimal build of Arrow C++ (in `build_arrow.sh`).
+This minimal build is then used by an example third-party C++ project
+using CMake logic to compile and link against the Arrow C++ library
+(in `build_example.sh` and `CMakeLists.txt`).
+
+When run, the example executable reads a file named `test.csv`,
+displays its parsed contents, and then saves them in Arrow IPC format in
+a file named `test.arrow`.
+
+## Running the example
+
+You can run this simple example using [Docker Compose][docker-compose]
+and the given `docker-compose.yml` and dockerfiles, which installs a
+minimal Ubuntu image with a basic C++ toolchain.
+
+Just open a terminal in this directory and run the following commands:
+
+```bash
+docker-compose run --rm minimal
+```
+
+Note that this example mounts two volumes inside the Docker image:
+* `/arrow` points to the Arrow source tree
+* `/io` points to this example directory
+
+## Statically-linked builds
+
+We've provided an example build configuration here with CMake to show how to
+create a statically-linked executable with bundled dependencies.
+
+To run it on Linux, you can use the above Docker image:
+
+```bash
+docker-compose run --rm static
+```
+
+On macOS, you can use the `run_static.sh` but you must set some environment
+variables to point the script to your Arrow checkout, for example:
+
+```bash
+export ARROW_DIR=path/to/arrow-clone
+export EXAMPLE_DIR=$ARROW_DIR/cpp/examples/minimal_build
+export ARROW_BUILD_DIR=$(pwd)/arrow-build
+export EXAMPLE_BUILD_DIR=$(pwd)/example
+
+./run_static.sh
+```
+
+On Windows, you can run `run_static.bat` from the command prompt with Visual
+Studio's command line tools enabled and CMake and ninja build in the path:
+
+```
+call run_static.bat
+```
+
+### Static linking against system libraries
+
+You can also use static libraries of Arrow's dependencies from the
+system. To run this configuration, set
+`ARROW_DEPENDENCY_SOURCE=SYSTEM` for `run_static.sh`. You can use
+`docker-compose` for this too:
+
+```bash
+docker-compose run --rm static-system-dependency
+```
+
+[docker-compose]: https://docs.docker.com/compose/