CMake OBJECT library + MinGW not linkng - cmake

I'm builds my static library using CMake and ninja. Static library builds from several CMake OBJECT libraries.
And I'm builds executable using qmake and MinGW (4.92, 32bit).
The Problem is, resulting static library not linking with executable. All functions from object libaries is undefined reference.
Without using ninja this problem not reproduces.

This is CMake's bug. Fixed in 3.4 version.
https://cmake.org/Bug/view.php?id=15729

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.

Building a rust library through CMake and using it as imported library target

I'm restucturing the CMake based build of a cross platform (macOS/Windows, Linux should be added soon) C++ project that has a third party rust library as dependendcy. Until now the rust lib dependency was supplied as precompiled library but I want to make its compilation part of my CMake build.
I got it working on macOS using the CMake makefile exporter by referencing the compiled library as a static imported library target and setting up a custom target with the command to build the rust library through cargo like this
add_library (rustlib STATIC IMPORTED)
add_custom_target (rustlib_cargo
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/Ext/rustlib/c-api
COMMAND cargo rustc --release -- --crate-type staticlib)
# Note: RUSTLIB_OUTPUT is set above refering to the absolute path of the produced platform specific library
set_target_properties (rustlib PROPERTIES IMPORTED_LOCATION ${RUSTLIB_OUTPUT})
add_dependencies (rustlib rustlib_cargo)
On macOS the cargo rustc command is invoked before the targets that link against my rustlib target are built and in case the rust library has been built previously this is detected by cargo and it just skips that compilation steph. But on Windows this fails with the built-in ninja exporter of Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 with an error like this:
ninja : error : '../../../Ext/rustlib/target/release/deps/rustlib.lib', needed by 'SomeTargetLinkingAgainstRustlib', missing and no known rule to make it
If I remove the line set_target_properties (rustlib PROPERTIES IMPORTED_LOCATION ${RUSTLIB_OUTPUT}) the build starts correctly, the rust build gets triggered, but as expected I end up with a linker error as the library to link against is not found. So is there any way to refer to a file that is not existent at configuration time but is guranteed to be created during compilation?

CMAKE - makefile target for a library

I'm currently changing the build system on my project, from gnu makefiles to cmake (that generate makefiles).
My project generates several libraries (.lib), and several executables (.exe).
Currently i generate the makefiles using the following command :
cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
The generated makefiles contain an all target, as well as a target for every executable (compiled as such with the add_executable cmake directive), so i can compile a subset of the project (which saves a lot of time) : make executable_1; make executable_2 and so on.
However, there is no target for the libraries (compiled as such with the add_library cmake directive) so i cannot do make library_1 for example. I want to do this because it would save a lot of time.
I tried to add a dummy executable in the library's cmake, and link the library to this executable (which only contains a main without actually using library_1's code).
add_library(library_1 test.cpp)
add_executable(dummy_exe dummy_main.cpp)
target_link_library(dummy_exe library_1)
It does add a target for dummy_exe but does not build the library because it does not actually need to link any of the library_1's code.
This was a workaround attempt anyway, and i'd rather just call make library_1 after all. Is there any way to add a makefile target for a library using cmake ?
As answered by w-m and Fred, CMAKE indeed create a target for libraries in the Makefile.
I was trying to build the library with the cmake subproject name of the library instead of the library name.
make help was indeed of big help to find this issue, as it lists everything that can be built.

How to static linking to glibc in cmake

I'm trying to build a package from Fedora that can run on a RedHat 6 machine. So I need to build and static linking with some library that does not exist in RedHat machine.
I found that I can you -static-libgcc or -static-libstdc++ to link with static version of standard library but I don't know how to do with glibc.
How can I link to static library of glibc with CMake?
I know the question mentions glibc but for C++, since -static-libgcc and -static-libstdc++ are linker options, the correct way to set them in CMake is with target_link_libraries().
So you would set it like this, where MyLibrary is the name of your project:
target_link_libraries(MyLibrary -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++)
Given this, if you want complete static linking of glibc you would likewise pass the -static flag.
target_link_libraries(MyLibrary -static)
If you want more of a global setting:
set(BUILD_SHARED_LIBS OFF)
set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "-static")
However, bear in mind that glibc is not designed to be statically linked, and without a great amount of additional work, you won't wind up with a truly static package. Your use case of building "a package from Fedora that can run on a RedHat 6 machine" will not readily work by statically linking glibc.

How do I tell CMake to link in a static library in the source directory?

I have a small project with a Makefile which I'm trying to convert to CMake, mostly just to get experience with CMake. For purposes of this example, the project contains a source file (C++, though I don't think the language is particularly relevant) and a static library file which I've copied from elsewhere. Assume for argument's sake that the source code to the library is unavailable; I only have the .a file and the corresponding header.
My handmade Makefile contains this build rule:
main: main.o libbingitup.a
g++ -o main main.o libbingitup.a
which works fine. How do I tell CMake to reproduce this? Not literally this exact makefile, of course, but something that includes an equivalent linking command. I've tried the obvious but naive ways, like
add_executable(main main.cpp libbingitup.a)
or
add_executable(main main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(main libbingitup.a)
as well as various things with link_directories(.) or add_library(bingitup STATIC IMPORTED) etc. but nothing so far that results in a successful linkage. What should I be doing?
Version details: CMake 2.8.7 on Linux (Kubuntu 12.04) with GCC 4.6.3
CMake favours passing the full path to link libraries, so assuming libbingitup.a is in ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}, doing the following should succeed:
add_executable(main main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(main ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/libbingitup.a)
If you don't want to include the full path, you can do
add_executable(main main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(main bingitup)
bingitup is the same name you'd give a target if you create the static library in a CMake project:
add_library(bingitup STATIC bingitup.cpp)
CMake automatically adds the lib to the front and the .a at the end on Linux, and .lib at the end on Windows.
If the library is external, you might want to add the path to the library using
link_directories(/path/to/libraries/)
I found this helpful...
http://www.cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/2011-June/045222.html
From their example:
ADD_LIBRARY(boost_unit_test_framework STATIC IMPORTED)
SET_TARGET_PROPERTIES(boost_unit_test_framework PROPERTIES IMPORTED_LOCATION /usr/lib/libboost_unit_test_framework.a)
TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(mytarget A boost_unit_test_framework C)
I want to add to the other comments, the project name is the first argument. I had a project called cmakecompile and i wanted to add libusb to it, the code is as follows,
add_executable(cmakecompile main.c)
target_link_libraries(cmakecompile "D:/msys2/mingw64/lib/libusb-1.0.a")
the project had just only a main.c file, the first parameter in target_link_libraries is the name of your project and the second parameter is the path of the library.
Note that may help: Since i am compiling under windows, i had to install msys2 because the library you have has to be compiled with the same compiler. For example if you get libusb and try to use it in a qt-creator project, it will not work and you may get unreferenced functions, therefore i had to install msys2 and install libusb from inside msys2, install make and create a QT Cmake project and compile from Qt creator using the msys2 make.
The full cmakelists.txt is as follow
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5)
project(cmakecompile LANGUAGES C)
add_executable(cmakecompile main.c)
target_link_libraries(cmakecompile "D:/msys2/mingw64/lib/libusb-1.0.a")