Book Image

CMake Cookbook

By : Radovan Bast, Roberto Di Remigio
Book Image

CMake Cookbook

By: Radovan Bast, Roberto Di Remigio

Overview of this book

CMake is cross-platform, open-source software for managing the build process in a portable fashion. This book features a collection of recipes and building blocks with tips and techniques for working with CMake, CTest, CPack, and CDash. CMake Cookbook includes real-world examples in the form of recipes that cover different ways to structure, configure, build, and test small- to large-scale code projects. You will learn to use CMake's command-line tools and master modern CMake practices for configuring, building, and testing binaries and libraries. With this book, you will be able to work with external libraries and structure your own projects in a modular and reusable way. You will be well-equipped to generate native build scripts for Linux, MacOS, and Windows, simplify and refactor projects using CMake, and port projects to CMake.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)

Further steps

After a successful port to CMake, the next step should be to localize the scope of targets and variables even further: consider moving options, targets, and variables closer to where they are used and modified. Avoid global variables since they will enforce an order to CMake commands, and this order may not be evident and will lead to a brittle CMake code. One approach to enforcing the separation of variable scopes is to divide larger projects into CMake projects, which are composed using the superbuild pattern (see Chapter 8, The Superbuild Pattern). Consider splitting large CMakeLists.txt files into smaller modules.

The next steps can be to test the configuration and compilation on other platforms and operating systems in order to generalize and bullet-proof the CMake code and make it more portable.

Finally, when migrating projects to a new build framework, the...