Book Image

Modern CMake for C++

By : Rafał Świdziński
5 (2)
Book Image

Modern CMake for C++

5 (2)
By: Rafał Świdziński

Overview of this book

Creating top-notch software is an extremely difficult undertaking. Developers researching the subject have difficulty determining which advice is up to date and which approaches have already been replaced by easier, better practices. At the same time, most online resources offer limited explanation, while also lacking the proper context and structure. This book offers a simpler, more comprehensive, experience as it treats the subject of building C++ solutions holistically. Modern CMake for C++ is an end-to-end guide to the automatization of complex tasks, including building, testing, and packaging. You'll not only learn how to use the CMake language in CMake projects, but also discover what makes them maintainable, elegant, and clean. The book also focuses on the structure of source directories, building targets, and packages. As you progress, you’ll learn how to compile and link executables and libraries, how those processes work, and how to optimize builds in CMake for the best results. You'll understand how to use external dependencies in your project – third-party libraries, testing frameworks, program analysis tools, and documentation generators. Finally, you'll get to grips with exporting, installing, and packaging for internal and external purposes. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to use CMake confidently on a professional level.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introducing CMake
5
Section 2: Building With CMake
10
Section 3: Automating With CMake

Creating reusable packages

We have used find_package() extensively in previous chapters. We saw how convenient it is and how it simplifies the whole process. To make our project accessible through this command, we need to complete a few steps so that CMake can treat our project as a coherent package:

  • Make our targets relocatable.
  • Install the target export file to a standard location.
  • Create a config-files and version file for the package.

Let's start from the beginning: why do targets need to be relocatable and how can we do this?

Understanding the issues with relocatable targets

Installation solves many problems but unfortunately, it also introduces some complexity: not only is CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX platform-specific but it can also be set by the user at the installation stage with the --prefix option. However, target export files are generated before the installation, during the build stage, at which point we don't know where the installed...