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Modern CMake for C++

Modern CMake for C++

By : Rafał Świdziński
4.7 (12)
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Modern CMake for C++

Modern CMake for C++

4.7 (12)
By: Rafał Świdziński

Overview of this book

Modern CMake for C++ isn't just another reference book, or a repackaging of the documentation, but a blueprint to bridging the gap between learning C++ and being able to use it in a professional setting. It's an end-to-end guide to the automation of complex tasks, including building, testing, and packaging software. This second edition is significantly rewritten, restructured and refreshed with latest additions to CMake, such as support of C++20 Modules. In this book, you'll not only learn how to use the CMake language in CMake projects but also discover how to make those projects maintainable, elegant, and clean. As you progress, you'll dive into the structure of source directories, building targets, and packages, all while learning how to compile and link executables and libraries. You'll also gain a deeper understanding of how those processes work and how to optimize builds in CMake for the best results. You'll discover how to use external dependencies in your project – third-party libraries, testing frameworks, program analysis tools, and documentation generators. Finally, you'll gain profi ciency in exporting, installing, and packaging for internal and external purposes. By the end of this book, you'll be able to use CMake confi dently at a professional level.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
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17
Other Books You May Enjoy
18
Index

Understanding the concept of a target

If you have ever used GNU Make, you have already seen the concept of a target. Essentially, it's a recipe that a buildsystem follows to compile a set of files into another file. It can be a .cpp implementation file compiled into an .o object file, or a group of .o files packaged into a .a static library. There are numerous combinations and possibilities when it comes to targets and their transformations within a build system.

CMake, however, allows you to save time and skip defining the intermediate steps of those recipes; it works on a higher level of abstraction. It understands how most languages build an executable directly from their source files. So, you don't need to write explicit commands to compile your C++ object files (as you would using GNU Make). All that's required is an add_executable() command with the name of the executable target followed by a list of the source files:

add_executable(app1 a.cpp b.cpp c.cpp)

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