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Comments on How to do "out-of-source" build properly with cmake?

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How to do "out-of-source" build properly with cmake?

+6
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There are two broad types of build environments - in-source and out-of-source. "In-source" means the compiled files will appear in the same directory as source files. "Out-of-source" means there is a dedicated directory for compilation results. It seems the latter one is more suitable for large projects, and it is also recommended by cmake.

Suppose my project contains several libraries, which have their own cmake fiels, CMakeLists.txt.

I have two options - store build results for the libraries in the directories where libraries are, or in the directory of the project I am building.

project
    possible place to put build results for libA and libB
    project_1.cpp
    project_2.cpp
    libA
        possible place to put build results for libA
        libA_1.cpp
        libA_2.cpp
    libB
        possible place to put build results for libB
        libB_1.cpp
        libB_2.cpp

Is there an option which is preferred by cmake?

Are there any obscure considerations which make one or the other option preferable?

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+3
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Whenever I've worked with CMake-based projects, the structure has been something like this:

  • project
    • src <-------- typically this is a source control working directory
      • CMakeLists.txt
      • project_1.cpp
      • project_2.cpp
      • libA
        • libA.cmake
        • libA_1.cpp
        • libA_2.cpp
      • libB
        • libB.cmake
        • libB_1.cpp
        • libB_2.cpp
    • build <-------- CMake output goes here!
    • runCMake.sh

My runCMake.sh then looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
CMAKE= #wherever it's installed

BUILD=`pwd`/build
SRC=`pwd`/src

mkdir -p $BUILD
cd $BUILD

$CMAKE $DEBUG_OPTS $SRC

In other words, I have one build directory that stores the output of everything. Note that this directory serves to store three different types of things:

  1. CMake's own configuration files for this project (eg the CMakeCache).
  2. The project files that will be used by your build tool to actually build the software (eg Makefiles, or MSVC .sln and .proj files)
  3. The actual output of compiling and building.

I honestly don't know whether it is possible to store those three separately from each other and, if so, whether you can split up where the compilation output is stored. Nor, alternatively, how to split it up so that you have multiple build directories each of which stores those three things but only for a subset of your project (ie one for each library and one for your main application).

But I don't know why you'd want those things, either.

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General comments (3 comments)
General comments
dmckee‭ wrote about 3 years ago

I work with a project (something my work depends on and is not available through the usual high level distribution mechanisms) that uses this scheme and it works, but it feels as hoc. Why do I need a script to invoke the meta-build system? To get both production and debug I end up using two scripts.

Hyperlynx‭ wrote about 3 years ago

Well, think about what the alternative is: managing the .sln or .xcodeproj or Makefile yourself. You run CMake to generate/update those files. If you're only on one platform you could dispense with CMake altogether and instead just include those project files in the repo directly.

Unless your specific objection is a script? On some platforms there's a GUI version (I use that on Windows).

Hyperlynx‭ wrote about 3 years ago

The project files do get set up to re-invoke CMake before they run, though. It's not often you actually have to re-run CMake yourself.