A cmake option that automatically specifies new values for other cmake options - cmake

Question

Currently my CMakeLists.txt file contains lots of little options for including or excluding particular pieces of functionality from the build; by default everything is built, but the user remove a feature from the build by passing an argument like -DWITH_FEATURE_X=OFF on the command line:
option(WITH_FEATURE_X "Enable feature X" ON)
if (WITH_FEATURE_X)
file(GLOB FEATURE_X_SRCS "${TOP_DIR}/feature_x/*.cpp")
list(APPEND ALL_SRCS ${FEATURE_X_SRCS})
else ()
message("CMake: -DWITH_FEATURE_X=OFF argument was specified: building without feature X.")
add_definitions(-DAVOID_FEATURE_X)
endif ()
... this works fine, but it's a little tedious in some cases where the caller has to specify a dozen -DWITH_FEATURE_X=OFF type arguments on the command line.
Since I know in advance of several common uses-cases where the user would like to specify a known set of features to be disabled, I'd like to be able to specify that with a single argument, something like this:
cmake -DWITH_MINIMAL_CONFIGURATION=ON ..
.... and have the CMakeLists.file act as if the user had specified:
cmake -DWITH_FEATURE_X=OFF -DWITH_FEATURE_Y=OFF -DWITH_FEATURE_Z=OFF [...and so on...] ..
Is there a way to do that, that won't overcomplicate the implementation of the CMakeLists.txt file?

Answer 1

CMake presets (since version 3.19) could be a good option here.
You could have a minimal_configuration configuration preset that would set those variables as cacheVariables. And then a minimal_configuration build preset that would use the minimal_configuration configuration preset.
"configurePresets": [
{
"name": "minimal_configuration",
...
"cacheVariables": {
"WITH_FEATURE_X": "OFF",
"WITH_FEATURE_Y": "OFF",
"WITH_FEATURE_Z": "OFF",
...
},
}
],
"buildPresets": [
{
"name": "minimal_configuration",
"configurePreset": "minimal_configuration"
}
]
Notice you can define a hierarchy of configuration presets, and let each level of that hierarchy manage different settings. For example, you could have a common_config first level, a windows_config and unixlike_config second level, a windows_debug_config, windows_release_config (and so on) third level...
In order to run CMake for a given preset, just pass it as a command line option:
~/your_project> cmake --preset minimal_configuration
~/your_project> cmake --build --preset minimal_configuration