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researching the subject have difficulty determining which advice is up to date and which approaches have already been replaced by easier, better practices.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

Installing and packaging

We're circling back to the subject discussed in the previous chapter and starting with a quick overview of the files needed to set up installation and packaging:

Figure 12.6 – Files configuring installation and packaging

Only files are needed here – most of the work is already done in previous sections. As you may remember, the top-level listfile includes a CMake module that's going to handle this process:

chapter-12/01-full-project/CMakeLists.txt (fragment)

...
include(Install)

We're interested in installing two items:

  • The Calc library artifacts: the static library, the shared library, and header files along with their target export file
  • The Calc console executable

The package definition config-file will only introduce library targets, as potential consuming projects won't depend on the executable.

After configuring the installation steps, we'll move on to the CPack...