CLion: issue with Cmake configuration types - cmake

I understand that by default, Clion creates the binary files for a project loaded in Clion in all the four configurations:
(Debug;Release;MinSizeRel;RelWithDebInfo)
as well as one called: __default__.
I am using a third party cmake module which downloads an external project in a way that add_subdirectory() can be run on it so it would be included in the root project.
add_subdirectory(${downloaded_proj_src_dir} ${downloaded_proj_bin_dir} EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL)
In this setup, if I decide to place the child project outside the binary directory of the root project, I get:
Error:Binary directories outside of CMake build directory are not supported. Most likely this error is caused by an add_subdirectory command with an explicitly specified binary_dir argument.
which is an understandable restriction by CMake.
now if I instead decide to set the binary directory of the downloaded project in a subdirectory of the binary directory of the parent project, ie:
set(downloaded_proj_bin_dir "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/${downloaded_proj}-build")
...
add_subdirectory(${downloaded_proj_src_dir} ${downloaded_proj_bin_dir} EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL)
I will get the file created in the parent binary directory of all the build configurations because ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR} is different for each configuration. To avoid seeing all these directories listed on the project view sidebar, I have set the CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES to be Debug. But even then, I get:
Error:Configuration Debug
The current CMakeCache.txt directory /path/Debug/downloaded_proj_bin/CMakeCache.txt is different than the directory /path/__default__/downloaded_proj_bin/CMakeCache.txt where CMakeCache.txt was created. This may result in binaries being created in the wrong place. If you are not sure, reedit the CMakeCache.txt
Clearly something is going on with this __default__ configuration which I don't understand. So the question is, what is the significance of this default configuration and why should there be a conflict here?
P.s. Setting the configuration to __default__ does not solve the problem as I will have a __default__0 configuration created instead and get the same error.
Update: some further observations
My enviornment variables set in IDE don't have any effect on the cmake builds.
Cmake "options" however which presumably will be passed as arguments to cmake do seem to work.
-D CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES=Debug.
When I specify the command line option, I get
Warning:Manually-specified variables were not used by the project:
CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES
But it clearly does have the effect of no longer creating the other build configurations. My guess is that this message relates to the __default__ build which is ignoring the argument.
Even in the case of specifying CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES in the IDE, I still get the additional __default__ build which is apparently unaffected by the CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES assignment.
Logging: message("Build type: ${CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE} ) does not return any build_type.
Outputting message(and generator: ${CMAKE_GENERATOR} ") returns "Unix-make files" for both, so both are being generated with the same generator.
Taking a diff from the CMakeCache.txt files, I can see that they are identical.

Do you have in DownloadProject.cmake the right setting? for:
set(_DownloadProjectDir "${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}")
I had the same problem trying to set google test(with the help of https://github.com/Crascit/DownloadProject) and my _DownloadProjectDir was setted as "test". Maybe when I moved this cmake file in my project Clion changed that automatically.

So, it turns out that you can sort this out quite easily by adding the following line above line 145 in DownloadProject.cmake:
file(REMOVE "${DL_ARGS_DOWNLOAD_DIR}/CMakeCache.txt")
This seems to be because CLion copies the default across to the other configurations and doesn't clear the cache. This is a problem only because DownloadProject creates a project within the project (I think...). Anyway, deleting this file before configuring the CMakeLists.txt by-passes this issue. I'll submit a pull request to the DownloadProject repository as this doesn't seem to have any adverse effects when not using CLion.

Related

Is it possible to force CMake to run add_compile_definitions() each time?

I have an embedded project (using ESP-IDF which builds projects with CMake), where I have a props.json file that contains several settings (e.g. "device type"). For example based on the actual value of "deviceType" the CMake open and read props.json by calling execute_process() and jq, then defines C preprocessor macros, such as: DEVICE_TYPE_A by using add_compile_definitions().
The problem is that, this will run only when I modify the CMakeLists.txt or clean the whole project, but I don't want to recompile each components when I change the props.json only the files that I wrote (so, depend on the settings). I'd like to make CMake read the file each time I build the project without cleaning it.
I did my research, so I know there are add_custom_target() and add_custom_command() that behave that way, however add_compile_definitions() cannot be called in a script. Is there a solution to achieve this or should I just use a header file configured by configure_file() and leave add_compile_definitions() alone?
This is actually pretty easy and you don't need to manually reconfigure CMake. Just add the following to the CMakeLists.txt in the directory containing your props.json file:
set_property(DIRECTORY . APPEND PROPERTY CMAKE_CONFIGURE_DEPENDS props.json)
This will add props.json to the list of files that the CMake-generated build scans when determining whether to re-run the CMake configure step. See the docs on CMAKE_CONFIGURE_DEPENDS for more detail.
In general, you should never need to manually re-run CMake1 after the first configure. If you do, it is an indication that you have not communicated all of the necessary information for CMake to generate a correct build system.
1 There is one notable exception: Xcode is known to be buggy when re-running the CMake configure step automatically.

Best practices with CMake with non-standard include and library directories

I have been trying to build Mozilla RR on a Linux box at work using CMake. We have a slightly eccentric arrangement where shared libraries are stored on network drives in locations like /sw/external/product-name/linux64_g63.dll/. Further, I have built some dependencies for the project in $HOME/sw/. (I am not a sudoer on this box.)
I am rather baffled as how I am supposed to communicate to CMake to look in non-standard directories. So far I have fudged:
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$HOME/sw/capnproto-0.6.1/lib/pkconfig \
CC=gcc-6.3 CXX=g++-6.3 \
cmake \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/sw/rr-5.1.0 \
-DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=$HOME/bin/python2 \
-DCMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH=$HOME/sw/libseccomp-2.2.3/ \
../src/
Which is obviously not a scalable solution, but it does at least complete the configuration successfully and emit some Makefiles.
If I omit -DCMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH=$HOME/sw/libseccomp-2.2.3/, CMake fails, complaining about a missing libseccomp-2.2.3 dependency. But it works if I do have that definition, telling me that CMake understands where the libseccomp-2.2.3 files are and so will properly add the paths to the necessary compiler invocations.
However, make does not succeed, because gcc fails to find a required header file from the libseccomp probject. Examining make VERBOSE=1, I find that CMake hasn't added -I$HOME/sw/libseccomp-2.2.3/include to the gcc invocation.
I feel like this is not the right approach. The other answers I have looked at tell me to modify the CMakeLists.txt file, but surely
that is not going to be scalable across multiple CMake projects, and
for each project, that will need me to maintain a separate CMakeLists.txt file for every platform (Solaris/Linux/Darwin/Cygwin) I build the software on.
Is there a canonical solution to solving this problem? Perhaps a per-site configuration file that will tell CMake how to find libraries and headers, for all projects I build on that site?
Your approach is correct, but cmake is never told to include SECCOMP - see end of this post.
The way cmake can be informed about custom dependency directory depends on how the dependency is searched (i.e. on what is written in CMakeLists.txt).
find_package/find_library/find_path/find_program
If dependency is found with one of above-mentioned commands, custom search directories can be easily added with CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH. There is no need to add full path to include, lib or bin - when package root is added find_-command will check appropriate sub-directories. CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH can be also set with environment variable.
Second option is CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH. Every path added to CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH list treated as separate root directory and is searched before system root directory.
Note that CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH will be ignored by find_-commands with NO_CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH argument.
Following four variables may be used to tune the usage of CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH:
CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_PACKAGE
CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_INCLUDE
CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_LIBRARY
CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_PROGRAM
When use of host system default libraries is undesired setting CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_INCLUDE and CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_LIBRARY to ONLY is a good practice. If dependency library or header is not found in CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH the configuration will fail. If cmake is allowed search system paths too, it is most likely that errors will occur during linking step or even runtime.
See find_package docs for more details.
find_package only
All above applies to find_package command too.
find_package can operate in two modes MODULE and CONFIG.
In MODULE mode cmake uses Find[PackageName].cmake script (module) to find dependent package. CMake comes with large number of modules and custom modules can be added with CMAKE_MODULE_PATH variable. Often find-modules can be informed about custom search paths via environment or cmake variables.
E.g. FindGTest.cmake searches path stored in GTEST_ROOT variable.
If no find module is available, find_package enters CONFIG mode. If a dependency package provides [PackageName]Config.cmake or [LowercasePackageName]-config.cmake cmake can be easily informed about that package with [PackageName]_DIR variable.
Example:
CMakeLists.txt contains:
find_package(Qt5)
FindQt5.cmake is not available, but ~/Qt5/Qt5.8/lib/cmake/Qt5Config.cmake file exists, so add
-DQt5_DIR="${HOME}/Qt5/Qt5.8/lib/cmake"
to cmake call.
pkg-config
CMake can use information provided by external pkg-config tool. It is usually done with pkg_check_modules command. Directory used by pkg-config can be customized with PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable. According to cmake documentation instead of setting PKG_CONFIG_PATH, custom .pc-files directories can be added via CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH. If CMake version is pre-3.1, PKG_CONFIG_USE_CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH have to be set to TRUE(ON) to enable this feature.
Methods of customizing dependencies search path is defined by CMakeLists.txt content. There is no universal solution here.
And now back to missing SECCOMP headers...
In CMakeLists.txt SECCOMP header is found with
find_path(SECCOMP NAMES "linux/seccomp.h")
but I cannot find any command telling CMake to use the found header. For example:
target_include_directories(<target_name> ${SECCOMP})
or globally:
include_directories(${SECCOMP})
I belive that CMakeLists.txt should be fixed. It is not a platform dependent solution.

CMake have a target depend on a generated file in a subdirectory

I have a scenario that I think is very similar to this one: CMake add_custom_command/_target in different directories for cross-compilation, however the solution for that issue isn't working for me.
In subdir/CMakeLists.txt I have:
add_custom_command(OUTPUT foo.h foo.cpp COMMAND ... DEPENDS foo.xml)
add_custom_target(generate_foo DEPENDS foo.h foo.cpp)
and then CMakeLists.txt:
add_executable(MyTarget
subdir/foo.h
subdir/foo.cpp
${OTHER_SOURCES})
add_dependencies(MyTarget generate_foo)
add_subdirectory(subdir)
This fails with "Cannot find source file: subdir/foo.h". The documentation for add_dependencies suggests that it will ensure that generate_foo builds before MyTarget, but if that's the case it looks like it's at least trying to access all source files before either target builds. Am I doing something wrong here? How can I compile source files that are generated by a custom target/command in a subdirectory?
The problem is that the GENERATED file property (that CMake uses to determine if it needs to check that a file exists at configure time) is not visible outside the directory in which the file is generated. The problem goes away in CMake 3.20. This is explained here.
I usually solve this problem by compiling generated source files into a static or object library in the subdirectory, then linking to that, since targets are globally visible. You can also explicitly set the GENERATED property on the generated files in the scope you wish to use them, but this hack breaks the encapsulation gained by using a subdirectory.
It's also worth noting that you can do away with the custom target and the call to add_dependencies because the generated files are already dependencies of the executable (this has always has been the case AFAIK).

Is it possible to alter CMAKE_MODULE_PATH from CMake commandline?

Edit: The accepted answer actually shows that it is pretty normally possible to set CMAKE_MODULE_PATH as any other CMake variable e.g. via the -DCMAKE_MODULE_PATH path CLI parameter. It seems that in my case there is some included CMake script that calls set(CMAKE_MODULE_PATH /library_path), which erases all previous paths set to the variable. That's why I couldn't get the variable to do what I wanted it to do. I'll leave the question here in case anybody else faces this kind of situation.
I'm building a (3rd party) project that uses the Protobuf library (but this question is general). My system has a system-wide install of a newer version of Protobuf than the project is compatible with. So I've downloaded and compiled from source an older version of Protobuf.
The project uses CMake, and in its CMakeLists.txt, there is:
find_package(Protobuf REQUIRED)
Which, however, finds the (incompatible) system install. Of course, CMake doesn't know about my custom build of Protobuf. But how do I tell it?
I've created a FindProtobuf.cmake file in, say, ~/usr/share/cmake-3.0/Modules/ and want the build process to use this one for finding Protobuf. But I haven't succeeded forcing CMake to pick up this one and not the system one. I think the reason is quite obvious from the CMake docs of find_package:
The command has two modes by which it searches for packages: “Module” mode and “Config” mode. Module mode is available when the command is invoked with the above reduced signature. CMake searches for a file called Find<package>.cmake in the CMAKE_MODULE_PATH followed by the CMake installation. If the file is found, it is read and processed by CMake. ... If no module is found and the MODULE option is not given the command proceeds to Config mode.
So until I succeed to change CMAKE_MODULE_PATH, CMake will just pick up the FindProtobuf.cmake installed to the default system path and won't ever proceed to the "Config" mode where I could probably make use of CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH.
It's important for me to not edit the CMakeLists.txt since it belongs to a 3rd party project I don't maintain.
What I've tried (all without success):
calling CMAKE_MODULE_PATH=~/usr/share/cmake-3.0/Modules cmake ... (the env. variable is not "transferred" to the CMake variable with the same name)
calling cmake -DCMAKE_MODULE_PATH=~/usr/share/cmake-3.0/Modules ... (doesn't work, probably by design?)
calling Protobuf_DIR=path/to/my/protobuf cmake ... (the project doesn't support this kind of override for Protobuf)
It seems to me that, unfortunately, the only way to alter the CMAKE_MODULE_PATH used by find_package is to alter it from within CMakeLists.txt, which is exactly what I want to avoid.
Do you have any ideas/workarounds on how not to touch the CMakeLists.txt and still convince find_package to find my custom Protobuf?
For reference, the CMake part of this project is on github .
As a direct answer to your question, yes, you can set CMAKE_MODULE_PATH at the command line by running cmake -DCMAKE_MODULE_PATH=/some/path -S /path/to/src -B /path/to/build.
But that probably doesn't do what you want it to do; see below.
The Bitbucket link you supplied is dead, but here are a few suggestions that might help.
Avoid writing your own find modules, especially when the upstream supplies CMake config modules.
You can direct CMake to your custom Protobuf installation by setting one of CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or Protobuf_ROOT (v3.12+) to the Protobuf install root.
You can tell find_package to try CONFIG mode first by setting CMAKE_FIND_PACKAGE_PREFER_CONFIG to true (v3.15+). Then set Protobuf_DIR to the directory containing ProtobufConfig.cmake.
Failing all else, you can manually set the variables documented in CMake's own FindProtobuf module, here: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/module/FindProtobuf.html
All these variables can be set at the configure command line with the -D flag.
There are very few environment variables that populate CMake variables to start and I would avoid relying on them. There is an exhaustive list here: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake-env-variables.7.html. CMAKE_MODULE_PATH is not among them.

CMAKE_SYSROOT in CMakeTestCCompiler

I have a project which builds for PPC, the Toolchain is working correctly, i can build when the sysroot is installed under /opt/poky/1.5. Now i tried to move that Installation to the Project Directory (it is not a part of the Repository there, it is just installed there so it is not reliant on that fix path, so that everyone can check out the project and build it wothout setting up the sysroot under that fixed folder).
To achieve this I set CMAKE_SYSROOT to "${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/poky" where the poky will be installed upon execution of a custom build script (the project also needs to build a secure image, so it is way simpler to use a build script instead of anything else, also this is convenient for jenkins).
Since the CMAKE_SYSROOT is build from the PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR which is different for the CMakeTestCCompiler Project, the cmake call fails teloling me that the CCompiler is broken of course. So I want to know, how I am supposed to get the CMakeTestCCompiler Project to compile with the same CMAKE_SYSROOT variable, without altering the CMakeTestCCompiler Project itself (of course).
Somehow I cannot find an answer anywhere, it seems that noone ever had this issue (which frankly i cannot understand, this should be a common setup in my opinion). (Or maybe i am just too much of a noob when it comes to CMAKE, which i will gladly admit)
I am not interested in solutions like: "JUST INSTALL IT IN A FIX PATH" or such... please, I need the setup like this, I have reasons for that.
THX for reading/trying/answering/helping
Have a nice day
EDIT1:
In CMakeLists.txt (top level CMakeFile so it should be used by any build):
`SET(CMAKE_SYSROOT "${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/poky/sysroots")`
In ToolchainCMake (the one given to the cmake as CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE):
`SET(CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME Linux)`
`SET(CMAKE_SYSTEM_VERSION 1)`
`SET(CMAKE_SYSROOT "${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/poky/sysroots")`
`SET(COMPILER_ROOT ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/poky/sysroots/i686-pokysdk-linux/usr/bin/powerpc-poky-linux-gnuspe)`
`SET(CMAKE_C_COMPILER ${COMPILER_ROOT}/powerpc-poky-linux-gnuspe-gcc)`
`SET(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER ${COMPILER_ROOT}/powerpc-poky-linux-gnuspe-g++)`
`MESSAGE("CMAKE_C_COMPILER: ${CMAKE_C_COMPILER}")`
`MESSAGE("CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER: ${CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER}")`
`MESSAGE("COMPILER_ROOT: ${COMPILER_ROOT}")`
`SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH ${SYS_ROOT}/ppce500v2-poky-linux-gnuspe)`
`SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_PROGRAM NEVER)`
`SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_LIBRARY ONLY)`
`SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_INCLUDE ONLY)`
EDIT2:
I used the
`set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER_WORKS 1 CACHE INTERNAL "")`
`set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_WORKS 1 CACHE INTERNAL "")`
settings to simulate the CMakeTestCCompiler build succeeding and realized that I am facing some additional problems: It seem that the packages are looked up on the system instead of the CMAKE_SYSROOT folder. Even tried the
`SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH ${CMAKE_SYSROOT})`
to try to force the search in there, but without luck. In the CMakeError.log I can see, that the compiler itself was configured with the prefix option that points to /opt/poky/1.5, the path that i want to "overwrite", now I am not sure if the compiler could even deal with an alternate path.
I felt the need to add these information, they not really add to the problem at hand.
ERRORS:
I also found some errors in the above cmake:
`SET(CMAKE_SYSROOT "${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/poky/sysroots")`
must be
`SET(CMAKE_SYSROOT "${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/poky/sysroots/ppce500v2-poky-linux-gnuspe")`
instead and therefor the
`SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH ${SYS_ROOT}/ppce500v2-poky-linux-gnuspe)`
changes to
`SET(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH ${CMAKE_SYSROOT})`
EDIT: Whole answer changed.
My first suspicion was that the problem is that value of ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR} is not known in CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE as it is processed before CMakeLists.txt. But this isn't true.
I had similar problem (CMake 2.8.12.2), everything worked OK, when I passed cross compiler by CC environment variable with --sysroot option, i.e. CMake was invoked as follows:
CC="arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc --sysroot=/path/to/sysroot" cmake /path/to/sources
When I switched to using toolchain file, CMake started to report that C compiler doesn't work.
To workaround this problem, I use CMakeForceCompiler package. Parts toolchain file (along with comments) I think are relevant:
include(CMakeForceCompiler)
set(CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME Linux)
set(CMAKE_SYSTEM_VERSION 1)
# Force compiler - only option that actually works
cmake_force_c_compiler (${TOOLCHAIN_PATH}/bin/arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc GNU)
cmake_force_cxx_compiler(${TOOLCHAIN_PATH}/bin/arm-linux-gnueabi-g++ GNU)
# NOTE: CMAKE_SYSROOT doesn't work as expected
add_definitions("--sysroot=${TOOLCHAIN_SYSROOT}")
set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "${CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS} --sysroot=${TOOLCHAIN_SYSROOT}" CACHE INTERNAL "" FORCE)
Note, that TOOLCHAIN_PATH and TOOLCHAIN_SYSROOT are my local variables set before.