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researching the subject have difficulty determining which advice is up to date and which approaches have already been replaced by easier, better practices.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

Packaging with CPack

Building projects from a source has its benefits, but it can take a long time and introduce a lot of complexity. This isn't the best experience for end users who just want to use the package, especially if they aren't developers themselves. A much more convenient form of software distribution is to use binary packages that contain compiled artifacts and other static files that are needed by the runtime. CMake supports generating multiple kinds of such packages through a command-line tool called cpack.

The following table lists the available package generators:

Most of these generators have extensive configurations. It is beyond the scope of this book to delve into all their details, so be sure to check out the full documentation, which can be found in the Further reading section. Instead, we'll focus on the general use case.

Note

Package generators shouldn't be confused with buildsystem generators (Unix Makefiles...