CMake Cookbook: Building, testing, and packaging modular software with modern CMake

Learn CMake through a series of task-based recipes that provide practical, simple, and ready-to-use CMake solutions for your code

Key Features

• Configure, build, and package software written in C, C++, and Fortran
• Progress from simple to advanced tasks with examples tested on Linux, macOS, and Windows
• Manage code complexity and library dependencies with reusable CMake building blocks

Book Description

CMake is a cross-platform, open-source tool for building software in a compiler-free method. CMake Cookbook features a collection of recipes and building blocks with tips and techniques for working with CMake, CTest, CPack, and CDash.

This book includes real-world examples in the form of recipes that cover different ways to configure, build, and test small- to large-scale code projects. You will learn to use CMake’s command-line tools and master modern CMake practices for configuring, building, and testing binaries and libraries. With this book, you will be able to work with external libraries and structure your own projects in a modular and reusable way. You will be well-equipped to generate native build scripts for Linux, MacOS, and Windows, simplify and refactor projects using CMake, and port projects to CMake.

By the end of this book, you will have progressed through CMake and understood all its components.

What you will learn

• Configure, build, and install code projects using CMake
• Detect operating systems, processors, and programs for conditional compilation
• Increase the portability of your code
• Refactor a large codebase into modules with the help of CMake
• Build multi-language projects
• Tweak CMake configuration files written by somebody else
• Package projects for distribution
• Port projects to CMake

Who this book is for

If you are a software developer keen to manage build systems using CMake or would like to understand and modify CMake code written by others, the CMake Cookbook is for you. Basic knowledge of C++, C, or Fortran is required to understand the topics covered in this book.

Table of Contents

1. From a Simple Executable to Libraries
2. Detecting the Environment
3. Detecting External Libraries and Programs
4. Creating and Running Tests
5. Configure-time and Build-time Operations
6. Generating Source Code
7. Structuring Projects
8. The Superbuild Pattern
9. Mixed-language Projects
10. Writing an Installer
11. Packaging Projects
12. Building Documentation
13. Alternative Generators and Cross-compilation
14. Testing Dashboards
15. Porting a Project to CMake