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researching the subject have difficulty determining which advice is up to date and which approaches have already been replaced by easier, better practices.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

Testing and program analysis

Program analysis and testing go hand in hand to assure the quality of our solutions. For example, running Valgrind becomes more consistent when test code is used. For this reason, we'll configure those two things together. Figure 12.5 illustrates the execution flow and files needed to set them up (a few snippets will be added to the src directory):

Figure 12.5 – Files used to enable testing and program analysis

As we already know, tests live in the test directory, and their listfile gets executed from the top-level listfile with the add_subdirectory() command. Let's see what's inside:

chapter-12/01-full-project/test/CMakeLists.txt

include(Testing)
add_subdirectory(calc)
add_subdirectory(calc_console)

Testing utilities defined in the Testing module are included at this level to allow both target groups (from the calc and the calc_console directories) to use them:

chapter-12/01-full-project/cmake...