What happened to FindSDL2 in CMake? - cmake

I use SDL2 in my game. I always was using custom FindSDL2.cmake, because there is no one in standard CMake set. However, some time ago posts about FindSDL2 did appeared. Example: Reddit post.
If your cmake is new enough and it has FindSDL2.cmake file, you can do this:
find_package(SDL2 REQUIRED)
But when I download latest CMake (3.13.2), it doesn't include FindSDL2.cmake.
What happened to it?

FindSDL2 has never appeared in CMake.
Following the reject reason in pull request #149, SDL2 ships with a SDL2Config.cmake, which provides a cmake package.
The documentation for find_package states that find_package(SDL2) will behave as follows:
Look for FindSDL2.cmake, use that if it exists. (module mode)
Otherwise, use the information in SDL2Config.cmake or sdl2-config.cmake. (config mode)
In short, make sure that your SDL2 package has installed the SDL2Config.cmake file and that is on your CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH. The documentation lists the exact paths and prefixes it looks under.

To easily integrate the SDL2 library, I developed cross-platform modern CMake modules for finding and using the SDL2 library as well as other related libraries:
SDL2: example, game example
SDL2_image: example
SDL2_ttf: example
SDL2_mixer: example
SDL2_net
SDL2_gfx: animation example
So the only things that you should do in order to integrate the SDL2 library are:
Clone SDL2 CMake modules inside your project:
git clone https://github.com/aminosbh/sdl2-cmake-modules cmake/sdl2
Add the following lines in your main CMakeLists.txt
list(APPEND CMAKE_MODULE_PATH ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/cmake/sdl2)
find_package(SDL2 REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} SDL2::Main)
Note: If CMake didn't find the SDL2 library (in Windows), we can specify the CMake option SDL2_PATH as follows:
cmake .. -DSDL2_PATH="/path/to/sdl2"
For more details, please read the README.md file.
This is a list of SDL2 samples and projects: https://github.com/aminosbh/sdl-samples-and-projects

Related

CMake TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS is empty

I have git cloned, built (with MSVC for both Debug and Release) and then installed wxWidgets:
cmake -B build wxWidgets
cmake --build build --config <CONFIG>
cmake --install build --prefix my_install --config <CONFIG>
with <CONFIG> = Debug and <CONFIG> = Release.
Then I used the following CMake script to link against it, as suggested by the wiki:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)
project(Test)
add_executable(Test WIN32 Main.cpp)
# wxWidgets
SET(wxWidgets_ROOT_DIR ${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/../thirdparty/my_install)
find_package(wxWidgets COMPONENTS core base REQUIRED)
include(${wxWidgets_USE_FILE})
target_link_libraries(Test PRIVATE ${wxWidgets_LIBRARIES})
# Copy runtime DLLs to the directory of the executable.
add_custom_command(TARGET Test POST_BUILD
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E echo "Runtime Dlls: $<TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS:Test>"
)
My goal is to automatically copy the DLLs into the directory of the built executable, so that they can be found at runtime. For that I'm using the TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS generator expression (follwing the sample code in the docs). In the code above, I only print out the expression at build time for testing purposes. The problem is that it is empty.
The approach worked for me before when installing and linking SDL, but SDL provides package configuration files which create imported targets, defining the DLL location(s) via IMPORTED_LOCATION_RELEASE or IMPORTED_LOCATION_DEBUG. For wxWidgets one is apparently supposed to use the FindwxWidgets.cmake script shipped with CMake, which sadly doesn't define the produced binaries. Maybe that's why TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS isn't populated.
Does anyone know, either how to get TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS filled or how to obtain the list of built wxWidgets DLLs for the current configuration (Release/Debug) post build copying?
Thanks a lot in advance!
I am dealing with a similar problem.
First sanity checks:
You have to work on windows platform otherwise this feature does not
work.
Your Cmake is 3.21 or above
Next comes fuzzy part. I think the library that you are trying to include have to be a Shared Imported library and you have to set a set_target_properties for IMPORTED_IMPLIB which is a path to a .lib file of sort (dll import library, I think it is called) So you have to make sure that it is all set in the package library that you trying to link with your executable.
If you have those dll avaiable and you just want to use them and not actually build them then you can write your own cmake script that will do just what I said above. Then you can include that cmake file in your project and then link against your app.
Note: I also work on similar issue right now and what I just said have not been working very reliably. I got some dlls to be copied and some do not.
Edit:
Cmake docs give a more detailed explanation on how this library setting should look like if you use find_package feature.
Found here: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/command/add_library.html#imported-libraries
An UNKNOWN library type is typically only used in the implementation
of Find Modules. It allows the path to an imported library (often
found using the find_library() command) to be used without having to
know what type of library it is. This is especially useful on Windows
where a static library and a DLL's import library both have the same
file extension.

Can't seem to include Glut to my cmake project Ubuntu [duplicate]

I've been stuck for a while now and I can't figure out how to get freeglut working. I thought I knew what it was asking me to do, so I added that set(prefix_path) line but it didn't do anything. Am I supposed to write my own freeglut-config.cmake or what?
Note: I am using the freeglut for MinGW package from this website
CMake File:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.7)
project(HW1)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)
set(SOURCE_FILES Triangle.cpp)
set(CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH "C:/freeglut")
find_package(GLEW REQUIRED STATIC)
find_package(FREEGLUT REQUIRED)
find_package(OPENGL REQUIRED)
include_directories(${FREEGLUT_INCLUDE_DIRS} ${GLEW_INCLUDE_DIRS} ${OPENGL_INCLUDE_DIRS})
link_directories(${FREEGLUT_LIBRARY_DIRS} ${GLEW_LIBRARY_DIRS} ${OPENGL_LIBRARY_DIRS})
add_definitions(${FREEGLUT_DEFINITIONS} ${GLEW_DEFINITIONS} ${OPENGL_DEFINITIONS})
add_executable(HW1 ${SOURCE_FILES})
target_link_libraries(HW1 ${FREEGLUT_LIBRARIES} ${GLEW_LIBRARIES} ${OPENGL_LIBRARIES})
Full error:
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:8 (find_package):
By not providing "FindFREEGLUT.cmake" in CMAKE_MODULE_PATH this project has
asked CMake to find a package configuration file provided by "FREEGLUT",
but CMake did not find one.
Could not find a package configuration file provided by "FREEGLUT" with any
of the following names:
FREEGLUTConfig.cmake
freeglut-config.cmake
Add the installation prefix of "FREEGLUT" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set
"FREEGLUT_DIR" to a directory containing one of the above files. If
"FREEGLUT" provides a separate development package or SDK, be sure it has
been installed.
If your application is GLUT-compatible, that it doesn't use any extension of freeglut, then it is better to search GLUT instead of FREEGLUT:
find_package(GLUT REQUIRED)
"Find" script used by this command is already shipped into CMake distro, and it searches freeglut too.
(Note, that with that command variables for include directories and linking libraries are GLUT_INCLUDE_DIR and GLUT_LIBRARY correspondingly).
If your application requires exactly freeglut (that is, uses some of its extensions incompatible with other GLUT implementations), you need to ship your package with FindFREEGLUT.cmake script and adjust CMAKE_MODULE_PATH variable correspondingly:
# Assuming you have <source-dir>/cmake/FindFREEGLUT.cmake
list(APPEND CMAKE_MODULE_PATH "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/cmake")
find_package(FREEGLUT REQUIRED)
You may find existing script in the net, or write it by yourself, like here.
In any case, if you have freeglut installed into non-system location, you need to hint CMake about that. E.g., by adjusting CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH.

CMake build and install shared library from subdirectory before building main directory

Here is my source code structure:
cd my_git_repo/
CMakeLists.txt
src/
main.cpp
mylibrary/
a.hpp
b.hpp
a.cpp
b.cpp
CMakeLists.txt
Root CMakeLists.txt:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.9)
project(myexe CXX)
add_subdirectory(src/mylibrary)
find_library(mylib NAMES mylibrary.so PATHS "./src/mylibrary/mylibrary.so")
add_executable(myexe src/main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(myexe ${mylib})
mylibrary/CMakeLists.txt is very simple. It builds a shared library and installs them.
Ideally, mylibrary target should be built and installed before myexe is built. But this doesn't happen. mylibrary is built followed by myexe. Installation happens later. Because of this, find_library fails. pkg_check_modules() works for other shared libraries but fails here because of the same reason.
I appreciate your help.
Edit:
This question differs from the duplicate because the answers posted to that question seem to be statically linking the library target_link_libraries(game engine). I want to dynamically link the .so library.
The idea in CMake is to build modules and then link them together.
You haven't shared the CMakeLists.txt for my library, so we cannot tell what it is doing. However, assuming that it is something like:
ADD_LIBRARY(mylibrary
file1.cpp
file2.cpp
)
Since you specified that you want mylibrary to always be linked as shared, you need to tell CMake that as well by either setting BUILD_SHARED_LIBS TO ON or by specifying SHARED in add_library:
ADD_LIBRARY(mylibrary SHARED
file1.cpp
file2.cpp
)
This is your library module. We will keep it simple for now and not worry about packing the library archive and installation here.
Now, back to your main CMakeLists.txt and how to make myexe consume it. Since you have already add_subdirectory(src/mylibrary), CMake knows about mylibrary. So simply link it using the module name. There is no need to find_library as you have already defined the module.
add_executable(myexe src/main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(myexe mylibrary)
This should suffice.
Do note, however, this is a very basic example to explain to you how CMake is designed to work. If you aren't building the library, and it is already installed, you would call find_library. Modern CMake is a bit more sophisticated and uses generator expressions, so be sure to read up on that as you progress to more complex projects.

How would I build and link an external library using CMake?

To start off, I should say that I've seen the answers on questions that were similar to mine, yet none of them seem to make sense to me. Here goes:
Say I have the following simple CMakeLists:
cmake_minimum_required (VERSION 2.8)
project (Example)
add_executable (Example Main.cpp)
I would then like to link a library that already has its own CMakeLists (for example, glfw) against Example. Of course, this brings into question how to properly set up the build order.
How would I go about doing this?
First let me describe what to do for GLFW. See the notes below for variations.
Build GLFW. As the official GLFW head's CMake support is currently broken, use this shaxbee fork:
git clone https://github.com/shaxbee/glfw.git
cmake -Hglfw -Bbuild/glfw -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=inst -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build/glfw --target install --config Release
This install step installs inst/lib/cmake/glfw3/glfw3Config.cmake, the glfw3 config-module which will be used by client projects to find GLFW.
Your project should look like this:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)
project(Example)
find_package(glfw3 REQUIRED)
add_executable(Example Main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(Example glfw3)
The find_package command finds the glfw3Config.cmake which creates an IMPORTED library, a CMake target, which incorporates all the information needed to use GLFW in your project.
The target_link_libraries command tells CMake not only to link to GLFW but to use its include directories and compile flags, too.
Configure your project with -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=inst (use full path if necessary)
Note: Other config-modules or find-modules may not provide IMPORTED targets. See the actual config or find-module for help. They usually provide <PACKAGE>_INCLUDE_DIRS and <PACKAGE>_LIBRARIES variables which should be added to the appropriate settings of your target:
target_include_directories(mytarget ${ZLIB_INCLUDE_DIRS})
or
include_directories(${ZLIB_INCLUDE_DIRS})
Same for target_link_libraries / link_libraries.
Build the external dependency first.
add a function call to find your external library. That can either be FindGLFW.cmake with find_package if you can find that or write it yourself using find_library et al. More information about including external libraries can be found in the CMake wiki
Add the includes and libraries to your Example executable.
This is how CMake should be used, I don't see why is not answered in the sources in the Internet.

Linking GLEW with CMake

How can you link GLEW to a project with CMake?
We've been trying to link GLEW to our project using CMake for at least 3 hours without any success so any help is accepted.
I'm using the FindGLEW.cmake which comes with CMake 3.1.0
CMakeLists.txt
find_package(GLEW REQUIRED)
if (GLEW_FOUND)
include_directories($(GLEW_INCLUDE_DIRS))
endif()
Environment Variables
I'm using MinGW w64 to compile the sources and we successfully linked GLFW and GLM just by copying the includes and libs to their respective folders, but after doing the same with GLEW, CMake still couldn't find it.
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough while formulating the question. I will provide any additional information required.
Edit: I've managed to link the header files by specifying their location in the CMake Cache file, though I'm getting undefined reference to glew functions like glewInit().
Typical CMake scripts like FindGLEW will define variables that specify the paths and files that your project needs. If the script can't automatically identify the correct paths (usually because of nonstandard install location, which is fine), then it leaves these variables up to you to fill in.
With command line CMake, you use the -D flag to define and set the value of a given variable. Other CMake interfaces, like CMake-gui or an IDE integration, give you this ability some other way.
However you do it, you can also modify the cache directly (CMakeCache.txt) and see what CMake is using in there or just clear the cache altogether. You'll have to rerun CMake for it to pick up your changes.
When it comes to linking, that's when you need to tell CMake which libs to link. Use the link_libraries command with what the automated script gives you.
find_package(GLEW REQUIRED)
include_directories(${GLEW_INCLUDE_DIRS})
link_libraries(${GLEW_LIBRARIES})
Other answers do obviously work, but the target based style of cmake makes it even easier since the GLEW find module defines the imported target GLEW::GLEW. All you need is:
find_package(GLEW REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(YourTarget GLEW::GLEW)
YourTarget is the target that you created with add_executable or add_library. No need to explicitly add include directories, they are added automatically by linking the targets.
The secret of find_package(GLEW) is in FindGLEW.cmake file with cmake install.
find_path(GLEW_INCLUDE_DIR GL/glew.h)
find_library(GLEW_LIBRARY NAMES GLEW glew32 glew glew32s PATH_SUFFIXES lib64)
The find_path and find_library commands find paths in standard system paths. If you want them to find paths in user defined directories, you should tell them.
For example:
set(CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH "d:/libs/glew-1.10.0")
set(CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH "d:/libs/glew-1.10.0/lib/Release/Win32/")
find_package(GLEW REQUIRED)
Reference:
http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.0/command/find_path.html
http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.0/command/find_library.html
I was struggling hard to link glew to cmake through command line on mac. This might be helpful but I am not sure :) I will walk you through step by step of what I have done.
I installed Cmake source from the web.
Then I went inside the cmake folder in terminal and typed
./bootstrap && make && make install
(this will install cmake command line tools on our OS platform)
I have some exercise files. I want cmake to generate xcode files for me for all those exercise files (ex. triangles.cpp, shader.cpp etc) So i made a directory inside exercise files folder.
$ mkdir xcode
$ cd xcode
$ cmake -G "Xcode" ..
At this point, Cmake suppose to install all xcode files that included correct libraries. But there was an error :
$ cmake -G "Xcode" ..
CMake Warning (dev) at CMakeLists.txt:3 (cmake_minimum_required):
Compatibility with CMake < 2.4 is not supported by CMake >= 3.0.
This warning is for project developers. Use -Wno-dev to suppress it.
system name is: Darwin-14.1.0
system processor is: x86_64
-- Could NOT find GLEW (missing: GLEW_INCLUDE_DIR GLEW_LIBRARY)
-- Could NOT find Doxygen (missing: DOXYGEN_EXECUTABLE)
-- Using Cocoa for window creation
-- Using NSGL for context creation
-- Building GLFW only for the native architecture
CMake Error: The following variables are used in this project, but they are set to NOTFOUND.
Please set them or make sure they are set and tested correctly in the CMake files:
GLEW_LIBRARY
linked by target "TextureLoader" in directory /Users/Mydir/Desktop/Exercise/Exercise Files
-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
Then to make sure I have installed GLEW and all its libraries correctly, I ran
$brew install glew
Yes, I have installed glew already but it was NOT linked. See the Warning below:
Warning: glew-1.12.0 already installed, it's just not linked
Then I ran the following commands:
$ brew unlink glew
$ brew link glew
And I have solved the error. So just make sure that you have linked glew. Hope this helps.
Happy Coding :)
Finally I found a simple and short CMakeLists which works if you have installed everything in default paths.(openGL, glfw and glew)
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.3)
project(openGL_tutorial)
find_package(OpenGL REQUIRED)
if(NOT OPENGL_FOUND)
message("ERROR: OpenGL not found")
endif(NOT OPENGL_FOUND)
set(GL_LIBRARY GL GLU X11)
add_executable(openGL_tutorial main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(openGL_tutorial glfw GLEW libGLEW.so libGLU.so libGL.so)
For what it is worth, in 2023, this works for me, on macOS, with GLEW, GLFW, and CMake installed using Homebrew:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.10)
project(Project)
add_executable(Project main.cpp)
find_package(glfw3 REQUIRED)
find_package(GLEW REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(Project glfw GLEW::glew)