Sample project that shows proper modern CMake usage on a dummy library and an executable that uses it. Accompanying code to my blog post It's Time To Do CMake Right
cmake
>= 3.13Boost
>= 1.65rapidjson
>= 1.1
cd libjsonutils
cmake -Bbuild
cmake --build build
You can run the tests:
cmake --build build -- test
You can install the lib in two ways. First, in a classical way: put it somewhere in your system so that executable can find it, or two, build it but register it in the CMake's User Package Registry, avoiding installation.
sudo cmake --build build -- install
This will install the example library under /usr/local/
on UNIX systems.
Alternatively, you can specify a custom installation directory by setting -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
in the cmake configure step:
cmake -Bbuild -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<custom_install_dir>
sudo cmake --build build -- install
To uninstall the library, you can run:
cd build
xargs rm < install_manifest.txt
see F.A.Q
Instead of actually installing the library, you can just build it and register the build in CMake's User Package Registry
cd libjsonutils
cmake -Bbuild -DCMAKE_EXPORT_PACKAGE_REGISTRY
This will register the library's build in CMake's User Package Registry (on UNIX systems it defaults to ~/.cmake
).
This is convenient, as packages depending on the library (e.g. via find_package
) will be able to find it through the registry, even when the library hasn't been installed.
If the library is in the CMake's User Package Registry or installed in a system known location, like /usr/local/
, you just build the executable with:
cd example_exec
cmake -Bbuild
cmake --build build
If you installed the library in a custom location you must point CMake
to the installation directory:
cd example_exec
cmake -Bbuild -DJSONUtils_DIR=<custom_install_dir>/lib/cmake/JSONUtils
cmake --build build
You are done!
cd example_exec
./build/example_exec