I'm trying to build my library with CMake. I'm working on CMakeLists.txt .
I want to be able to do the following:
I have a directories called
include
src
Then inside of these there is
Agui folder.
And in that folder are the sub folders of the library.
So far from what I've gathered:
I'll need to do:
set(AGUI_SOURCES
src/Agui/Rectangle.cpp
src/Agui/xxx.cpp (and so on)
)
Then I think need to do:
include_directories(./include)
And then I'm not quite sure.
I know that add_library will be involved but I'm not sure how.
The thing is, I want to create 2 options: DLL, or static.
If it is DLL, then AGUI_BUILD_DLL must be defined.
So based on this information:
Am I on the right track?
How do I create the options
What do I put in add_library
How do I add the preprocessor AGUI_BUILD_DLL if the user wants the DLL version?
If any or all of these could be answered I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks
I would recommend taking a look at the CMake tutorial which covers adding executables, libraries, system introspection etc. The cmake command also self documents, so on the command line entering,
cmake --help-command add_library
would give you the documentation for the add_library command. You could use the --help-commands to get a full listing of all CMake command documentation. So you can use the option command to add an option for building shared or static, and use the add_definitions command to add a preprocessor definition.
For example,
option(BUILD_SHARED "Build shared libraries" OFF)
if(BUILD_SHARED)
add_definitions(-DAGUI_BUILD_DLL)
add_library(agui SHARED ${AGUI_SOURCES})
else()
add_library(agui STATIC ${AGUI_SOURCES})
endif()
You should note targetName_EXPORTS will be defined when building the library, and so can be used in the declspec logic. This is done by CMake, and is also useful when using visibility support in GCC on Unix systems.
Maybe , do not know :)
OPTION(AGUI_BUILD_DLL "Build agui DLL" OFF)
somewhere near the start of CMakeLists.txt. You may want to use ON instead of OFF - depends on whether you want DLL build to de default.
3,4.
if(AGUI_BUILD_DLL)
add_library(agui SHARED ${AGUI_SOURCES})
set_target_properties(agui PROPERTIES DEFINE_SYMBOL "AGUI_BUILD_DLL")
else()
add_library(agui STATIC ${AGUI_SOURCES})
endif()
Related
I'm used to defining CMake target dependencies using the target_link_libraries() command. Recently, though, I've noticed the existence of another command, add_dependencies(). When should I use the latter rather than the former?
Note: I tried reading this question: target_link_libraries and add_dependencies - but the answers confused me. I understand I should not use both. But it's not entirely clear to me when I should use which.
add_dependencies should only be used where you need to establish a dependency in the build process that would otherwise not be present.
If a you want to influence the linker options, you use target_link_libraries.
For INTERFACE targets target_link_libraries should be used, even if it doesn't have an effect on the linker options. An example would be "linking" a header only library: This usually only results in include directories being inherited; you use target_link_libraries for this nonetheless.
A notable example of using add_dependencies would be to make sure MODULE targets dynamically loaded by an executable target get built when building the executable.
Looking around on the net I have seen a lot of code like this:
include(FindPkgConfig)
pkg_search_module(SDL2 REQUIRED sdl2)
target_include_directories(app SYSTEM PUBLIC ${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_link_libraries(app ${SDL2_LIBRARIES})
However that seems to be the wrong way about doing it, as it only uses the include directories and libraries, but ignored defines, library paths and other flags that might be returned by pkg-config.
What would be the correct way to do this and ensure that all compile and link flags returned by pkg-config are used by the compiled app? And is there a single command to accomplish this, i.e. something like target_use(app SDL2)?
ref:
include()
FindPkgConfig
First of, the call:
include(FindPkgConfig)
should be replaced with:
find_package(PkgConfig)
The find_package() call is more flexible and allows options such as REQUIRED, that do things automatically that one would have to do manually with include().
Secondly, manually calling pkg-config should be avoid when possible. CMake comes with a rich set of package definitions, found in Linux under /usr/share/cmake-3.0/Modules/Find*cmake. These provide more options and choice for the user than a raw call to pkg_search_module().
As for the mentioned hypothetical target_use() command, CMake already has that built-in in a way with PUBLIC|PRIVATE|INTERFACE. A call like target_include_directories(mytarget PUBLIC ...) will cause the include directories to be automatically used in every target that uses mytarget, e.g. target_link_libraries(myapp mytarget). However this mechanism seems to be only for libraries created within the CMakeLists.txt file and does not work for libraries acquired with pkg_search_module(). The call add_library(bar SHARED IMPORTED) might be used for that, but I haven't yet looked into that.
As for the main question, this here works in most cases:
find_package(PkgConfig REQUIRED)
pkg_check_modules(SDL2 REQUIRED sdl2)
...
target_link_libraries(testapp ${SDL2_LIBRARIES})
target_include_directories(testapp PUBLIC ${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_compile_options(testapp PUBLIC ${SDL2_CFLAGS_OTHER})
The SDL2_CFLAGS_OTHER contains defines and other flags necessary for a successful compile. The flags SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS and SDL2_LDFLAGS_OTHER are however still ignored, no idea how often that would become a problem.
More documentation here http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/module/FindPkgConfig.html
If you're using cmake and pkg-config in a pretty normal way, this solution works.
If, however, you have a library that exists in some development directory (such as /home/me/hack/lib), then using other methods seen here fail to configure the linker paths. Libraries that are not found under the typical install locations would result in linker errors, like /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmy-hacking-library-1.0. This solution fixes the linker error for that case.
Another issue could be that the pkg-config files are not installed in the normal place, and the pkg-config paths for the project need to be added using the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable while cmake is running (see other Stack Overflow questions regarding this). This solution also works well when you use the correct pkg-config path.
Using IMPORTED_TARGET is key to solving the issues above. This solution is an improvement on this earlier answer and boils down to this final version of a working CMakeLists.txt:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.14)
project(ya-project C)
# the `pkg_check_modules` function is created with this call
find_package(PkgConfig REQUIRED)
# these calls create special `PkgConfig::<MODULE>` variables
pkg_check_modules(MY_PKG REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET any-package)
pkg_check_modules(YOUR_PKG REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET ya-package)
add_executable(program-name file.c ya.c)
target_link_libraries(program-name PUBLIC
PkgConfig::MY_PKG
PkgConfig::YOUR_PKG)
Note that target_link_libraries does more than change the linker commands. It also propagates other PUBLIC properties of specified targets like compiler flags, compiler defines, include paths, etc., so, use the PUBLIC keyword with caution.
It's rare that one would only need to link with SDL2. The currently popular answer uses pkg_search_module() which checks for given modules and uses the first working one.
It is more likely that you want to link with SDL2 and SDL2_Mixer and SDL2_TTF, etc... pkg_check_modules() checks for all the given modules.
# sdl2 linking variables
find_package(PkgConfig REQUIRED)
pkg_check_modules(SDL2 REQUIRED sdl2 SDL2_ttf SDL2_mixer SDL2_image)
# your app
file(GLOB SRC "my_app/*.c")
add_executable(my_app ${SRC})
target_link_libraries(my_app ${SDL2_LIBRARIES})
target_include_directories(my_app PUBLIC ${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_compile_options(my_app PUBLIC ${SDL2_CFLAGS_OTHER})
Disclaimer: I would have simply commented on Grumbel's self answer if I had enough street creds with stackoverflow.
Most of the available answers fail to configure the headers for the pkg-config library. After meditating on the Documentation for FindPkgConfig I came up with a solution that provides those also:
include(FindPkgConfig)
if(NOT PKG_CONFIG_FOUND)
message(FATAL_ERROR "pkg-config not found!" )
endif()
pkg_check_modules(<some-lib> REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET <some-lib>)
target_link_libraries(<my-target> PkgConfig::<some-lib>)
(Substitute your target in place of <my-target> and whatever library in place of <some-lib>, accordingly.)
The IMPORTED_TARGET option seems to be key and makes everything then available under the PkgConfig:: namespace. This was all that was required and also all that should be required.
There is no such command as target_use. But I know several projects that have written such a command for their internal use. But every project want to pass additional flags or defines, thus it does not make sense to have it in general CMake. Another reason not to have it are C++ templated libraries like Eigen, there is no library but you only have a bunch of include files.
The described way is often correct. It might differ for some libraries, then you'll have to add _LDFLAGS or _CFLAGS. One more reason for not having target_use. If it does not work for you, ask a new question specific about SDL2 or whatever library you want use.
If you are looking to add definitions from the library as well, the add_definitions instruction is there for that. Documentation can be found here, along with more ways to add compiler flags.
The following code snippet uses this instruction to add GTKGL to the project:
pkg_check_modules(GTKGL REQUIRED gtkglext-1.0)
include_directories(${GTKGL_INCLUDE_DIRS})
link_directories(${GTKGL_LIBRARY_DIRS})
add_definitions(${GTKGL_CFLAGS_OTHER})
set(LIBS ${LIBS} ${GTKGL_LIBRARIES})
target_link_libraries([insert name of program] ${LIBS})
I've got a cmake project that pretty much looks like this:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0)
SET(CMAKE_DEBUG_POSTFIX "_d")
include_directories(../TransfunctionerProject)
include_directories(../TransmogrifierProject)
set(Libraries
ContinuumTransfunctioner
Transmogrifier
)
set(SourceFiles
Wrapper.cpp
Logger.cpp
)
add_library(Frobnigator SHARED ${SourceFiles})
add_library(FrobnigatorStatic STATIC ${SourceFiles})
set_target_properties(FrobnigatorStatic PROPERTIES OUTPUT_NAME Frobnigator)
target_link_libraries(Frobnigator ${Libraries})
Where ContinuumTransfunctioner and Transmogrifier projects include the debug postfix directive SET(CMAKE_DEBUG_POSTFIX "_d") so that libContinuumTransfunctioner_d.so and libTransmogrifier_d.so both exist.
The problem is that the current project appears to be linking against the static library without the _d suffix and complains:
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lContinuumTransfunctioner
The Libraries that you pass into the target_link_libraries call are interpreted as filenames, not as target names.
This is the unfortunate fallback for that call in CMake: If you pass a random string to it, that cannot be interpreted in a meaningful way, CMake will always assume it to be plain library name. Sometimes this is just what you want, but the name has to be an exact match for an existing library. The whole debug postfix magic will be lost here.
What you might have wanted to do was to pass a library target name instead. This will trigger a much smarter handling of the dependency and would solve your problem. However, that only works if the library is a known target in the context of the target_link_libraries call. You can easily check this as follows:
if(TARGET ContinuumTransfunctioner)
message("Library target name")
else()
message("Plain library name")
endif()
target_link_libraries(Frobnigator ContinuumTransfunctioner)
So how do you get to the target name case? This depends on how your build is structured. If the library is being built as part of your CMake run, simply make sure that the corresponding add_library call is performed from a subdirectory that is pulled in via add_subdirectory from the file that performs the target_link_libraries call.
If the library in question is an external dependency, you need to build an imported target that carries all the relevant information where to find the library files (including any potential debug postfixes). This can be a bit cumbersome to do manually, so if you can, you might want to use CMake's packaging mechanism to generate this automatically as part of the library's build process.
Here's the solution, courtesy of the good people on the cmake mailing list:
# Note:
# $<$<CONFIG:Debug>:_d> is called a generator expression.
# It outputs _d if the build is debug.
#
set(Libraries
ContinuumTransfunctioner$<$<CONFIG:Debug>:_d>
Transmogrifier$<$<CONFIG:Debug>:_d>
)
Looking around on the net I have seen a lot of code like this:
include(FindPkgConfig)
pkg_search_module(SDL2 REQUIRED sdl2)
target_include_directories(app SYSTEM PUBLIC ${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_link_libraries(app ${SDL2_LIBRARIES})
However that seems to be the wrong way about doing it, as it only uses the include directories and libraries, but ignored defines, library paths and other flags that might be returned by pkg-config.
What would be the correct way to do this and ensure that all compile and link flags returned by pkg-config are used by the compiled app? And is there a single command to accomplish this, i.e. something like target_use(app SDL2)?
ref:
include()
FindPkgConfig
First of, the call:
include(FindPkgConfig)
should be replaced with:
find_package(PkgConfig)
The find_package() call is more flexible and allows options such as REQUIRED, that do things automatically that one would have to do manually with include().
Secondly, manually calling pkg-config should be avoid when possible. CMake comes with a rich set of package definitions, found in Linux under /usr/share/cmake-3.0/Modules/Find*cmake. These provide more options and choice for the user than a raw call to pkg_search_module().
As for the mentioned hypothetical target_use() command, CMake already has that built-in in a way with PUBLIC|PRIVATE|INTERFACE. A call like target_include_directories(mytarget PUBLIC ...) will cause the include directories to be automatically used in every target that uses mytarget, e.g. target_link_libraries(myapp mytarget). However this mechanism seems to be only for libraries created within the CMakeLists.txt file and does not work for libraries acquired with pkg_search_module(). The call add_library(bar SHARED IMPORTED) might be used for that, but I haven't yet looked into that.
As for the main question, this here works in most cases:
find_package(PkgConfig REQUIRED)
pkg_check_modules(SDL2 REQUIRED sdl2)
...
target_link_libraries(testapp ${SDL2_LIBRARIES})
target_include_directories(testapp PUBLIC ${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_compile_options(testapp PUBLIC ${SDL2_CFLAGS_OTHER})
The SDL2_CFLAGS_OTHER contains defines and other flags necessary for a successful compile. The flags SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS and SDL2_LDFLAGS_OTHER are however still ignored, no idea how often that would become a problem.
More documentation here http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/module/FindPkgConfig.html
If you're using cmake and pkg-config in a pretty normal way, this solution works.
If, however, you have a library that exists in some development directory (such as /home/me/hack/lib), then using other methods seen here fail to configure the linker paths. Libraries that are not found under the typical install locations would result in linker errors, like /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmy-hacking-library-1.0. This solution fixes the linker error for that case.
Another issue could be that the pkg-config files are not installed in the normal place, and the pkg-config paths for the project need to be added using the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable while cmake is running (see other Stack Overflow questions regarding this). This solution also works well when you use the correct pkg-config path.
Using IMPORTED_TARGET is key to solving the issues above. This solution is an improvement on this earlier answer and boils down to this final version of a working CMakeLists.txt:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.14)
project(ya-project C)
# the `pkg_check_modules` function is created with this call
find_package(PkgConfig REQUIRED)
# these calls create special `PkgConfig::<MODULE>` variables
pkg_check_modules(MY_PKG REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET any-package)
pkg_check_modules(YOUR_PKG REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET ya-package)
add_executable(program-name file.c ya.c)
target_link_libraries(program-name PUBLIC
PkgConfig::MY_PKG
PkgConfig::YOUR_PKG)
Note that target_link_libraries does more than change the linker commands. It also propagates other PUBLIC properties of specified targets like compiler flags, compiler defines, include paths, etc., so, use the PUBLIC keyword with caution.
It's rare that one would only need to link with SDL2. The currently popular answer uses pkg_search_module() which checks for given modules and uses the first working one.
It is more likely that you want to link with SDL2 and SDL2_Mixer and SDL2_TTF, etc... pkg_check_modules() checks for all the given modules.
# sdl2 linking variables
find_package(PkgConfig REQUIRED)
pkg_check_modules(SDL2 REQUIRED sdl2 SDL2_ttf SDL2_mixer SDL2_image)
# your app
file(GLOB SRC "my_app/*.c")
add_executable(my_app ${SRC})
target_link_libraries(my_app ${SDL2_LIBRARIES})
target_include_directories(my_app PUBLIC ${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_compile_options(my_app PUBLIC ${SDL2_CFLAGS_OTHER})
Disclaimer: I would have simply commented on Grumbel's self answer if I had enough street creds with stackoverflow.
Most of the available answers fail to configure the headers for the pkg-config library. After meditating on the Documentation for FindPkgConfig I came up with a solution that provides those also:
include(FindPkgConfig)
if(NOT PKG_CONFIG_FOUND)
message(FATAL_ERROR "pkg-config not found!" )
endif()
pkg_check_modules(<some-lib> REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET <some-lib>)
target_link_libraries(<my-target> PkgConfig::<some-lib>)
(Substitute your target in place of <my-target> and whatever library in place of <some-lib>, accordingly.)
The IMPORTED_TARGET option seems to be key and makes everything then available under the PkgConfig:: namespace. This was all that was required and also all that should be required.
There is no such command as target_use. But I know several projects that have written such a command for their internal use. But every project want to pass additional flags or defines, thus it does not make sense to have it in general CMake. Another reason not to have it are C++ templated libraries like Eigen, there is no library but you only have a bunch of include files.
The described way is often correct. It might differ for some libraries, then you'll have to add _LDFLAGS or _CFLAGS. One more reason for not having target_use. If it does not work for you, ask a new question specific about SDL2 or whatever library you want use.
If you are looking to add definitions from the library as well, the add_definitions instruction is there for that. Documentation can be found here, along with more ways to add compiler flags.
The following code snippet uses this instruction to add GTKGL to the project:
pkg_check_modules(GTKGL REQUIRED gtkglext-1.0)
include_directories(${GTKGL_INCLUDE_DIRS})
link_directories(${GTKGL_LIBRARY_DIRS})
add_definitions(${GTKGL_CFLAGS_OTHER})
set(LIBS ${LIBS} ${GTKGL_LIBRARIES})
target_link_libraries([insert name of program] ${LIBS})
I have a huge project managed with CMake and this project has hundreds of components each of them having own source files and each of them linking to a list of libraries, specified with target_link_libraries(${project} some_libraries, some_other_libraries)
Now, what I am aiming for is that:
Without actually modifying any of the CMakeLists.txt I want ALL the projects's target executable to link to some specific libraries.
Is there a way of achieving this? Since this is a one time trial, I don't want to manually hunt down all the CMakeLists.txt files and modify them (yes, this is the other alternative). Just a note, I compile the entire project from command line, using cmake (no cmake gui).
This is kind of a hack, but for a C++ project, you can use CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_LIBRARIES. For a C project, I think you would use CMAKE_C_STANDARD_LIRBARIES.
Example for C++ that links to libbar and libfoo:
cmake ... -DCMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_LIBRARIES="-lbar -lfoo"
See the documentation here:
https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.6/variable/CMAKE_LANG_STANDARD_LIBRARIES.html
This won't be available for older versions of CMake; it was added some time after version 3.0.
This is a dirty, dirty hack, so please only use it for testing.
You can actually overload the add_executable command by defining a function of the same name. Do this close to the top of the top-level CMakeLists.txt:
function (add_executable name)
message("Added executable: " ${name})
_add_executable(${name} ${ARGN})
target_link_libraries(${name$} your_additional_lib)
endfunction()
Note that _add_executable is an internal CMake name that may break in future CMake versions. As of now (version 3.0) it seems to work with all versions though.
You can overload add_library the same way if required.
For more fine-grained control over what is linked, instead of calling target_link_libraries you can also mess with the LINK_LIBRARIES and INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES target properties directly.