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)

Switching generators

The code for this recipe is available at https://github.com/dev-cafe/cmake-cookbook/tree/v1.0/chapter-01/recipe-02 and has a C++, C, and Fortran example. The recipe is valid with CMake version 3.5 (and higher) and has been tested on GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows.

CMake is a build system generator and a single CMakeLists.txt can be used to configure projects for different toolstacks on different platforms. You describe in CMakeLists.txt the operations the build system will have to run to get your code configured and compiled. Based on these instructions, CMake will generate the corresponding instructions for the chosen build system (Unix Makefiles, Ninja, Visual Studio, and so on). We will revisit generators in Chapter 13, Alternative Generators and Cross-compilation.

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