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Comments on Having trouble adding include directories

Parent

Having trouble adding include directories

+2
−2

I'm trying to set up a simple test project, to unit test a change I'm working on. The change is to a file inside some existing project.

I've tried to set up the includes as the original has it, but I'm still getting compiler errors complaining that an included file can't be found. (This project uses a homebrew build system other than CMake, so I couldn't just look in its CMake files to see how it did it).

My CMakeLists.txt looks like this:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16.2)
project(Testing LANGUAGES CXX)

set(sources
/Users/me/Projects/OtherProject/repo/src/FooBarAPI/Blah.cpp
)

include_directories(/Users/me/Projects/OtherProject/repo/src/FooBarAPI/)

add_executable(test main.cpp ${sources})

But make spits out:

In file included from /Users/me/Projects/Testing/repo/main.cpp:1:
/Users/me/Projects/OtherProject/repo/src/FooBarAPI/Blah.hpp|3 col 10| fatal error: 'BeepBoop.hpp' file not found
#include "BeepBoop.hpp"
         ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 error generated.

Indeed, if I look in the Makefile which CMake generated, there's no FooBarAPI anywhere in there. Isn't that what include_directories is for? What am I missing?

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General comments (2 comments)
Post
+3
−1

Ah.

There's a good reason the compiler says it can't find the file: it's not there.

In my particular case, BeepBoop.hpp actually gets automatically generated from other files by the ordinary build process, and I didn't realise this.

include_directories is perfectly correct.

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General comments (2 comments)
General comments
alex‭ wrote almost 4 years ago · edited almost 4 years ago

Never, ever use include_directories. It's effectively deprecated and bad practice. My team automatically rejects any PR that uses it. Use target_include_directories instead.

Hyperlynx‭ wrote almost 4 years ago

Can you elaborate? Why is it bad practice?