Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

Will you help us build our independent community of developers helping developers? We're small and trying to grow. We welcome questions about all aspects of software development, from design to code to QA and more. Got questions? Got answers? Got code you'd like someone to review? Please join us.

Post History

80%
+6 −0
Q&A How to do "out-of-source" build properly with cmake?

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...

2 answers  ·  posted 4y ago by anatolyg‭  ·  last activity 3y ago by alex‭

Question cmake
#1: Initial revision by user avatar anatolyg‭ · 2020-12-15T12:43:46Z (almost 4 years ago)
How to do "out-of-source" build properly with cmake?
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?