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researching the subject have difficulty determining which advice is up to date and which approaches have already been replaced by easier, better practices.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

The order of linking and unresolved symbols

A linker can often seem whimsical and start complaining about things for no apparent reason. This is an especially difficult ordeal for programmers starting out who don't know their way around this tool. It's no wonder, since they usually try to avoid touching build configuration for as long as they possibly can. Eventually, they're forced to change something (perhaps add a library they worked on) in the executable, and all hell breaks loose.

Let's consider a fairly simple dependency chain – the main executable depends on the outer library, which depends on the nested library (containing the necessary int b variable). Suddenly, an inconspicuous message appears on the programmer's screen:

outer.cpp:(.text+0x1f): undefined reference to 'b'

This isn't such a rare diagnostic – usually, it means that we forgot to add a necessary library to the linker. But in this case, the library...