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researching the subject have difficulty determining which advice is up to date and which approaches have already been replaced by easier, better practices.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

Partitioning your project

As our solutions grow in the number of lines and files they have, we slowly understand that the inevitable is coming: either we start partitioning the project or we drown in lines of code and a multitude of files. We can approach this problem in two ways: by portioning the CMake code and by moving the source files to subdirectories. In both cases, we aim to follow the design principle called separation of concerns. Put simply, break your code into chunks, grouping code with closely related functionality while decoupling other pieces of code to create strong boundaries.

We talked a bit about partitioning CMake code when discussing listfiles in Chapter 1, First Steps with CMake. We spoke about the include() command, which allows CMake to execute the code from an external file. Calling include() doesn't introduce any scopes or isolations that are not defined within the file (if the included file contains functions, their scope will be handled correctly...