how to use clang tidy in CMake - cmake

I would like to use CMake and clang-tidy in my project, however I see that build times are quite a bit higher when I use this in all the main cmake file:
set(CMAKE_CXX_CLANG_TIDY
clang-tidy-11;
-format-style='file';
-header-filter=${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR};
)
It is working well, but I don't want to have this build-time penalty every time I build the project during development. Therefore I thought I would make a separate target that builds all, but uses clang-tidy. And when I do a regular debug or release build it does not do any checking. However I don't know how to do this in Cmake. Do I make a custom target with a command "cmake --build" with a target_set_property of CMAKE_CXX_CLANG_TIDY?
This feels rather clunky, so my question is, are there other ways to do this?

however I see that build times are quite a bit higher when I use this in all the main cmake file:
You're going to have to pay for the cost of running clang-tidy sometime or another. It's essentially running the first few phases of a compiler to analyze your code and look for errors.
Setting CMAKE_CXX_CLANG_TIDY runs clang-tidy in line with your build, as you have observed.
This feels rather clunky, so my question is, are there other ways to do this?
Yes. When using the Ninja or Makefile generators, you may set -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON at the command line. That will create a file called compile_commands.json in your build folder that the standalone clang-tidy can read.
In sum, at the command line, you would manually run:
$ cmake -G Ninja -S . -B build -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON
$ clang-tidy-11 -format-style=file -header-filter=. -p build
The -p flag tells clang-tidy in which directory to find your compile_commands.json.

Related

Waiting for targets in a CMake build

I think I do have a CMake order/parallelism problem.
In my build process, I need to build a tool which is then later used by some other target. This tool is a separate project with a CMakeLists.txt file like this:
project (package-tool LANGUAGES CXX)
set (SOURCES package_tool.cpp)
...
Later in the build, this top level target is referenced by some other target:
...
add_custom_command (OUTPUT "${DST_FILE}"
COMMAND ${PACKAGE_COMMAND} "${DST_FILE}"
COMMAND package-tool.exe -e "${DST_FILE}"
DEPENDS ${PACKAGE_DEPENDENCIES} package-tool)
...
I use ninja for building and the dependencies (ninja -t depends) are looking correctly. Also, the build commands (ninja -t commands) are making sense. But: From time to time, the build fails. The message does not make sense, it reads:
This version of package-tool.exe is not compatible with the version
of Windows you're running.
Because the build runs in parallel (32 processes) I suspect that the package-tool target is not completed when the generated exe is being used in the second target, which might lead to this confusing error message. Again, most of the time the build succeeds but every 10th or 20th run, it fails with that message.
So now my question is:
Is there a way to wait for a tool/target having been finished building in a parallel build in CMake/Ninja ?
Or how do I handle the task of building build tools in the same build process correctly ?
Thank you in advance !
Actually depend on the executable file and run the executable file, not the target. Don't concern yourself with any .exe suffix. Also better don't assume add_custom_command will be run in CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY - if you depend on specific directory explicitly set it with WORKING_DIRECTORY.
add_custom_command (
OUTPUT "${DST_FILE}"
COMMAND ${PACKAGE_COMMAND} "${DST_FILE}"
COMMAND $<TARGET_FILE:package-tool> -e "${DST_FILE}"
DEPENDS ${PACKAGE_DEPENDENCIES} $<TARGET_FILE:package-tool>
)

Proper way to determine generator for cmake project

I'm in a cmake build directory and want to build the project, but don't know if cmake was run with -G Unix\ Makefile or -G Ninja.
Now I know I can just be ignorant of that and use cmake --build ., but when I want to provide additional options cmake --build . -- SOMETHING I should know if I should provide gnumake or ninja options.
As possible solutions I found that I can just check the presence of a Makefile or build.ninja file. Or grep in the CMakeCache.txt for CMAKE_GENERATOR.
EDIT:
In a similar question here it is explained that values passed to cmake with -D can be queried with cmake -LA -N. But this doesn't list the -G parameter.
I am wondering if there is a more proper way (just like cmake -LA -N instead of grepping for variable values).
You've cited two possible solutions:
Check presence of build system files. Not a general solution, as it only works for some generators, but it may work in your case. This would not work for Visual Studio (for example, unless you parse the Visual Studio files themselves), as each generator version creates the same filenames.
Grep CMakeCache.txt for CMAKE_GENERATOR. Relies on platform specific tools (grep), and the location of the CMakeCache.txt. Both likely not a problem in most situations.
A slight modification to the second option, which makes it more portable, is to cache the CMAKE_GENERATOR in another variable:
set(USED_CMAKE_GENERATOR "${CMAKE_GENERATOR}" CACHE STRING "Expose CMAKE_GENERATOR" FORCE)
Then, when you use cmake -L, USED_CMAKE_GENERATOR will show up.

CMake command line arguments in a Ninja build

I am trying to use Ninja + CMake to build a project.
This project has a custom target that takes additional arguments.
E.g. make target option=value
It works fine in make, however I am not sure how to get Ninja to take in additional command line arguments.
Is this possible with a Ninja build?
I don't think it's possible to do directly through Ninja. I just scanned through the Ninja documentation to double check and didn't see anything.
Instead, you could modify CMake cache variables via CMake (see cmake -D and cmake -L). That way you could change your build on the fly, or create a few different build directories with different settings in each one.

CMake build & link to library without installing to /usr/local or elsewhere

I'm trying to include an external library in a build environment that uses CMake. I'm not trying to install it on the local system (in fact I'd rather not do that, I don't want /usr/local clogged up with all kinds of libraries); I'd just like to have the resulting libxml2.a available for linking with my executable. I can build it fine with the following in CMakeLists.txt:
set (LIBXML_PATH ${MY_SOURCE_DIR}/libxml2-2.9.1)
add_custom_target (build_libxml ALL
COMMENT "Building libxml"
COMMAND ./configure --prefix=/tmp
COMMAND make
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${LIBXML_PATH}
)
But I'm still having trouble with the following:
1) Is this the right approach in the first place, for the general purpose of getting libraries built with configure and make into a CMake environment?
2) How do I get the resulting library (i.e. libxml2.a) under my build output directory?
3) How can I link to that library for my executable builds?
I tried a fiddly solution with
ADD_LIBRARY( xml2 STATIC libxml2.a )
but it seems like there must be a better way than hauling a whole library's contents into… a library.
Thanks.
You need to make it clearer to CMake what is going on here. All it can see now is that you have some custom command that it will run every time. Instead of using add_custom_target with COMMAND, I've found it better to use add_custom_command.
Something like this:
set (LIBXML_PATH ${MY_SOURCE_DIR}/libxml2-2.9.1)
add_custom_command(
OUTPUT libxml2.a
COMMENT "Building libxml"
COMMAND ./configure --prefix=/tmp
COMMAND make
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${LIBXML_PATH}
)
target_link_libraries(your-program libxml2.a)
By doing it this way, CMake can understand that your custom command's essential product is libxml2.a, and when CMake sees something depending on that, it will run the command (if the library doesn't exist already).

cmake "make run"

I'm a little unsure of terminology in this problem domain, which is an issue when I try to search for things.
I'm using CMake for my build process. I'd like to make a Makefile target such that I can use make run to run a given process (specifically, the one I've just built with make). I realize I could just make a shell script, or just run the command by typing it out. If I was writing a Makefile myself, I'd do this like so:
run:
./path/to/binary
I don't ever write a Makefile myself, though - that's generated by cmake - and I'm not sure what to put in my CMakeLists.txt to get it to generate the desired make run target.
I've found the cmake command 'execute_process', but that doesn't seem to be what I'm after - I don't want to actually run anything during the build process.
Extra: In addition, I'd love to be able to do something like the following:
CMAKE_COMMAND_ADD_MAKEFILE_TARGET ( ${CMAKE_PROJECT_DIR}/binary )
That is, add the path/to/binary using a cmake variable, if that's possible.
You are looking for add_custom_target. For instance:
add_custom_target(run
COMMAND binary
DEPENDS binary
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_PROJECT_DIR}
)