Using value of __GLIBCXX__ in cmake - cmake

There are plenty of examples of using cmake to set a preprocessor value. I'm having the reverse problem -- I want to find the value of __GLIBCXX__ and then perform other cmake commands conditionally based on the result.
Up until now, I had been using the GCC version as a surrogate for libstdc++ functionality, like this:
if("${CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ID}" STREQUAL "GNU")
if (CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_VERSION VERSION_LESS 4.6)
....
# other gcc versions
....
endif()
elseif ("${CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ID}" STREQUAL "Clang")
# and so on
endif()
The problem I'm now having is the fallout from a known issue with libstdc++ and gcc-4.8 c++11 regex support, and the fact on many setups clang reuses the system libstdc++, therefore inheriting the same problem. Under these circumstances, there's no version test for clang that will help, since it's specifically related to libstdc++, and my surrogate method of using the compiler version no longer works.
In order to fallback on Boost.Regex or PCRE if either clang or gcc are using the libstdc++ distributed with gcc-4.8 or earlier, the best way I can think of is to check if __GLIBCXX__ <= 20140404, but I can't see how to get cmake to do it in a straight-forward way, since clang might not always be using libstdc++, e.g. most OS X systems.
CheckVariableExists doesn't seem to help, I suppose for at least two reasons; firstly, a preprocessor macro isn't a variable, and secondly, it doesn't give the value, only indicates its presence.

You could use CHECK_CXX_SOURCE_COMPILES to compile a specific test which fails when your condition is not met:
INCLUDE (CheckCXXSourceCompiles)
CHECK_CXX_SOURCE_COMPILES(
"
#include <cstdio>
#ifdef __GLIBCXX__
#if __GLIBCXX__ <= 20140404
#error test failed
#endif
#endif
int main() { return 0;}
" GLIBCXX_TEST)
IF(NOT GLIBCXX_TEST)
MESSAGE(STATUS "__GLIBCXX__ test failed")
ENDIF()

Based on m.s.'s idea and taking Marc Glisse's observation about __GLIBCXX__ not being a reliable way to test for this, I wrote a CMake module to test for broken implementations of regex support. In order for this test to pass, the compiler will need to be targetting C++11 or higher.
Gist is here: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/7520ce6f64c63e2f8e79
Sample use:
include(CheckForRegex)
check_cxx_native_regex_works(USE_NATIVE_REGEX)
add_definitions("-DUSE_NATIVE_REGEX=${USE_NATIVE_REGEX}")
if (NOT USE_NATIVE_REGEX)
find_package(Boost REQUIRED COMPONENTS regex)
endif()

Related

What is the correct way to specify the -lm flag to compile a file with gcc in CMake? [duplicate]

How do I add the math library to my CMake file? This post references adding a target link library, yet I am not too familiar with C. An Additional post - Could someone please demonstrate an example. Documentation I am using C and I receive an undefined reference to 'pow' with the pow method of the math header.
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.3)
project(CSCI-E-28-Unix-Linux-Systems-Programming)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++11")
set(SOURCE_FILES
CMakeLists.txt
getchar.c
main.cpp
hw0
more01.c)
#target_link_libraries(<math.h> m)
add_executable(main main.cpp)
add_executable(getchar getchar.c)
add_executable(more01 more01.c)
add_executable(argu print_all_arguments.c)
add_executable(chars chars.c)
add_executable(ch4 ch4.c)
Many mathematical functions (pow, sqrt, fabs, log etc.) are declared in math.h and require the library libm to be linked. Unlike libc, which is automatically linked, libm is a separate library and often requires explicit linkage. The linker presumes all libraries to begin with lib, so to link to libm you link to m.
You have to use it like target_link_libraries(ch4 m) to link libmto your target. The first argument must be a target. Thus it must be used after add_executable(ch4 ch4.c) like:
add_executable(ch4 ch4.c)
target_link_libraries(ch4 m)
For various targets it's a good idea to test if adding a library is needed or not and if so where it's located of how it's named. Here's one way to do it:
:
include(CheckLibraryExists)
CHECK_LIBRARY_EXISTS(m sin "" HAVE_LIB_M)
if (HAVE_LIB_M)
set(EXTRA_LIBS ${EXTRA_LIBS} m)
endif (HAVE_LIB_M)
:
//More tests & build-up of ${EXTRA_LIBS}
:
add_executable(ch4 ch4.c)
target_link_libraries(ch4 PUBLIC ${EXTRA_LIBS})
For targets where libm is part of libc, the above test should fail, i.e. ${EXTRA_LIBS} will miss it and target_link will not try to add.
I am frankly a bit surprised that this kind of question still doesn't have a proper answer for Modern CMake. These days, the recommended (and portable) approach is this:
find_library(MATH_LIBRARY m)
if(MATH_LIBRARY)
target_link_libraries(MyTarget PUBLIC ${MATH_LIBRARY})
endif()

in cmake how do I apply -std=c++11 flag for C++ code, but not for C code in the same directory

In a project with a mixture of C++ and C code in one directory, I need the -std=c++11 flag to apply for the C++ code, but not the C code. (Because that causes an error on MacOS.)
Currently I do this:
add_compile_options( -std=c++11 )
However, there don't seem to be any options on the add_compile_options() function to allow me to specify that these flags should only be used for C++ files.
In autotools this would be achieved by setting CXXFLAGS for C++ and CFLAGS for C code. Is there some way to do the same in CMake?
Don't use add_compile_options for anything, ever! In the worst case, you can use target_compile_options, but for setting the language standard, CMake has special support that should always be preferred.
For the target you want to compile as C++11, simply write:
target_compile_features(my_target PRIVATE cxx_std_11)
You should use the target_compile_features in other answer, if not, use set_property as also presented in other answer. Still, you can pass compile_options specifically to C++ compiler with generator expression:
# prefer other answers to it
add_compile_options(
$<$<COMPILE_LANGUAGE:CXX>:-std=c++11>
)
Here is one way to do it. Note you must specify the required property. And I like to disable extensions to not rely on any compiler specific flags.
set_target_properties(myTarget
PROPERTIES
CXX_STANDARD 11
CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED YES
CXX_EXTENSIONS NO
)
This can be done using
# Setting your C++ standard.
set_property(TARGET your_target PROPERTY CXX_STANDARD 11)
# Setting your C standard.
set_property(TARGET your_target PROPERTY C_STANDARD 11)
Of course the standard number has to be a supported version number:
For C++ this includes: 98, 11, 14, 17, 20 and 23.
For C this includes: 90, 99 and 11.
You do not have to use both of them. You can thus ask CMake to use C++11 while still using the default C standard.

How can I define an executable that has different compiler command-line arguments?

I have a C++ project and I want to test the compatibility of library headers with different compiler versions. I have a simple source file (that includes said headers) and I want to change the compiler argument to std=gnu++11 for this one target. How do I do that?
executable('old_compiler_test', ['octest.cxx']
# override ARGS here ??? how
)
Note that I have
add_global_arguments(
['-std=gnu++17',
....
rather than the dedicated option for this, in spite of the warning to prefer the special option, because the special option simply doesn't work. (Why is a question I've never tracked down)
update
To clarify: I'm not trying to make additional configurations in the same way that debug and release are configurations. I want a different compiler argument to be applied to a single target within the configuration.
From the Meson documentation, you can use the argument <languagename>_args to pass additional compiler arguments. In your case, since you use C++, it would give something like
executable('old_compiler_test', ['octest.cxx'],
cpp_args: ['std=gnu++11']
)
However the documentation also specify that there are no way to disable an argument added by add_global_argument(), so you will end up with both -std=gnu++17 and -std=gnu++11 passed to the compiler. I don't know how your compiler will behave, but I tried to pass both arguments to GCC 10.2 and it uses c++17 (not what you want).
Workaround
It seems that if you define the C++ version in the project() statement, Meson will removes it if an other version is specified in compiler arguments, giving the behaviour you expect.
Here is the sample I used:
meson.build
project('project-name', 'cpp',
default_options: ['cpp_std=c++17']
)
executable('old_compiler_test', ['octest.cxx'],
cpp_args: ['-std=gnu++11']
)
octest.cxx
#include <iostream>
int main() {
std::cout << __cplusplus << std::endl;
}
After compilation, running the executable will print 201103, which means that the compiler used c++11 as desired.

Getting CMake CHECK_CXX_COMPILER_FLAG to work

Note: This is my first time using CMake. I don't know much about it, so I'm just posting a bunch of information to see if anyone can see my problem.
I would like the ability to automatically determine which c++11 flag is appropriate, given my compiler. There are many examples of this line. Here is my CMakeLists.txt following such an example:
cmake_minimum_required (VERSION 2.8)
#Add the c++11 flag, whatever it is
include(CheckCXXCompilerFlag)
CHECK_CXX_COMPILER_FLAG(-std=c++11 COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX11)
CHECK_CXX_COMPILER_FLAG(-std=c++0x COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX0X)
if(COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX11)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++11")
elseif(COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX0X)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++0x")
else()
message(STATUS "The compiler ${CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER} has no C++11 support. Please use a different C++ compiler.")
endif()
project(AnalyzeGames)
set(AnalyzeGames_SRCS AnalyzeGames.cpp)
add_executable(AnalyzeGames ${AnalyzeGames_SRCS})
Here is my cmake output when trying to use this file: http://pastebin.com/3AUwqffD
Here is CMakeError.log: http://pastebin.com/EbNKvGt8
Here is CMakeOutput.log: http://pastebin.com/kVJ0enJC
echo $CC: /usr/bin/gcc
echo $CXX: /usr/bin/g++
I can compile a simple test executable with g++ using either flag manually.
cmake --version: cmake version 2.8.12.2
For some reason CMake is not recognizing that my compiler does support both of those flags.
The cmake output tells you that it does not recognize the '.cxx' extension because it doesn't know that your project is a C++ project. To fix this, you should enable C++ in the project command. Try to change the following line:
project(AnalyzeGames)
to:
project(AnalyzeGames CXX)
and then move it to the 2nd line of the CMakeLists.txt, right under cmake_minimum_required. The configuration should work as expected after this.
TLDR
Compiler checks are only performed in the variable passed is not previously defined, which includes in the cache from previous failed attempts. Use unset(my_var CACHE) to force checking to always occur, or just be aware of this behaviour and clear the cache manually when needed.
Detail
I too had this problem (with cmake 2.8.12.2) and I had to turn on trace output, and step through the code to get a similar toy build to work I had make sure the variables I used (COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX11_*) in these calls:
CHECK_CXX_COMPILER_FLAG(-std=c++11 COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX11)
CHECK_CXX_COMPILER_FLAG(-std=c++0x COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX0X)
Were set such that they named themselves:
set(COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX11 "COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX11")
The other posters solution didn't work for me, it mainly just seemed to limit the detecting of compilers to just CXX and ignored the C compiler.
The issue appears to be with this line of code in the cmake module:
if("${VAR}" MATCHES "^${VAR}$")
Which in the trace output is:
/usr/share/cmake/Modules/CheckCXXSourceCompiles.cmake(30): if(COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX0X MATCHES ^COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX0X$ )
It looks as if the expression on the left of the MATCHES is replaced with the variables value, but the expression on the right is assumed to be plain text.
If the MATCH fails then the main part of the macro is skipped and according the to the log the check fails.
Looking at later versions of this macro online it looks as if this line has changed to only perform the compile check if the variable is undefined.
It as at this point that I realise that this is the intent / hack of the original code; if the X is undefined then "X" MATCHES "^X$" will be true, but then the compile check can be performed, fail for some other reason and then never be performed again.
So the solution is either force unset of variable in cache before calling the macro using:
unset(COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX0X CACHE)
Or clear the cache manually and be prepared for this behaviour.

If value not equal in cmake 2.8

Short version: I have build options that only work on one platform. The autotools file I'm converting form has a check of the form if test "$platform_linux" != "yes". Can I do the same thing in my CMakeLists.txt (test if the value is NOT equal)?
Slightly longer version: I've got a test for various platforms following the advice found here:
IF(${CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME} MATCHES "Linux")
# Linux specific code
SET(OperatingSystem "Linux")
ENDIF(${CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME} MATCHES "Linux")
I'd like to do a test of the form IF(${CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME} NOT MATCHES "Linux"). This doesn't appear to work, and the only documentation I can find is a mailing-list post from 2002, which suggests the NOT isn't valid for cmake prior to 1.2. [Link].
Is this still the case in later cmake versions, specifically 2.6 and/or 2.8?
You're close! The correct syntax for IF is
IF(NOT <expression>)
So in your specific case, you want
IF(NOT ${CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME} MATCHES "Linux")