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

Question

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

Answer 1

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)

Answer 2

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/)

Answer 3

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)

Answer 4

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")