Create a header file alias in cmake - c++

I am converting some buck scripts to cmake and i have hit an issue where the script, based on conditional compilation flag creates an alias of the header file to include and in the source file the aliased named is included, for representational purposes we have something like this
if(someConditionTrue)
Commheader.h = TargetAHeader.h
else
Commheader.h = TargetBHeader.h
I am wondering if something like this is possible with cmake. The file commheader.h doesn't exist in the file system and just is used as an alias to represent the necessary header.
I tried sset_source_files_properties and set_target_properties but it doesn't work , i still get filenotfound error when i compile the code.
PS: i am new to both buck and cmake,

What #user wrote in the comments is the only reasonable way from my experience. Some time ago I had (not really the same, but similar) issue, that lead me to create either hardlinks if it was compiled on Windows or symlinks if it was elsewhere.
To distinguish it I checked for the compiler (we used only MSVC for Windows), i.e. I had code that looked something like this (inside a macro)
NOTE: in this example you can see it was POST_BUILD (hence why I mentioned it was only a similar problem):
if (MSVC)
# Make a hard link to the file
add_custom_command(TARGET ${TARGET} POST_BUILD
COMMAND if not exist "${HEADER_DEST_DIR}/${HEADER}" \( mklink /h "${HEADER_DEST_DIR}/${HEADER}" "${HEADER_SOURCE_DIR}/${HEADER}" \)
)
else()
# Make a symbolic link to the file
add_custom_command(TARGET ${TARGET} POST_BUILD
COMMAND ln -sf "${HEADER_SOURCE_DIR}/${HEADER}" "${HEADER_DEST_DIR}/${HEADER}"
)
endif()
I used get_filename_component() to get the required properties of the original headerfile example usage:
get_filename_component(HEADER_DIRECTORY "${HEADER}" DIRECTORY)
#user mentioned that it is much simpler now via file(CREATE_SYMLINK) and I would give it a try. Remember that you only need it for the build process.

Related

Create CMake target that copies files/dirs but excludes some items

I am trying to generate a CMake target for a C++ project using add_custom_target that copies the contents of the directory in which the CMakeLists.txt resides into ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}, but excludes a given list of files.
While it looks like a quite easy task, I'm facing problems here. My attempts so far:
1) Generate a list of all files/dirs, remove the items to be excluded and use the CMake copy command:
file(GLOB files_to_copy LIST_DIRECTORIES TRUE *)
list(REMOVE_ITEM files_to_copy
${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/file_to_exclude.txt
${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/dir_to_exclude
# ...
)
add_custom_target(my-target
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy ${files_to_copy} ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}
)
Problems:
Removing items this way works on a string comparison level, which could lead to problems when using symbolic links, for example
The copy command line tool apparently supports copying directories, however it doesn't seem to work on my machine, therefore directories do not get copied.
2) Use the file command to copy the files, excluding some files
file(COPY "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/" DESTINATION ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}
PATTERN "file_to_exclude.txt" EXCLUDE
PATTERN "dir_to_exclude" EXCLUDE
)
Problems:
This does exactly what I want, except that the command is not bound to a target and therefore is always executed. But I only need the copy operation to be a target.
Is there any possibility to bind the file(COPY ...) command to a target? Or any other straightforward solution to achieve what I want?
Please note that I only want to use CMake built-in tools and not execute any OS-specific shell commands (working on a cross-platform project).
CMake scripting commands work only in CMake context and are executed immediately.
But a COMMAND in add_custom_command (or add_custom_target) is executed in the context of a build tool (e.g. Makefile), not in CMake context.
However, you may put CMake scripting commands into separate CMake script, and call this script from the COMMAND. This solution has the same platform-independent properties as CMakeLists.txt itself.
You may parameterize separate script either:
With configure_file CMake command.
By passing -D parameters to CMake when call the script.
The first approach is quite simple: you write the script as would you write CMakeLists.txt itself. But it generates additional files for every parametrization set.
The second approach is useful for multi-purpose (or multi-usable) scripts, as it doesn't create additional copy of the script for every usage. But it requires some design of the parameters.
Using 'configure_file'
copy_sources.cmake.in (as if commands are written in CMakeLists.txt):
file(COPY "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/" DESTINATION ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}
PATTERN "file_to_exclude.txt" EXCLUDE
PATTERN "dir_to_exclude" EXCLUDE
)
CMakeLists.txt:
# Instantiate the parameterized script in the binary directory.
configure_file(copy_sources.cmake.in copy_sources.cmake)
add_custom_target(my-target
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -P ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/copy_sources.cmake
)
Using '-D' parameters
copy_sources.cmake:
# Expect the script to be called from the source directory.
# This saves one parameter.
#
# DEST_DIR denotes the directory for copy to.
file(COPY "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/" DESTINATION ${DEST_DIR}
PATTERN "file_to_exclude.txt" EXCLUDE
PATTERN "dir_to_exclude" EXCLUDE
)
CMakeLists.txt:
add_custom_target(my-target
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND}
-DDEST_DIR=${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR} # all '-D' options should preceed '-P' one
-P ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/copy_sources.cmake
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} # The script assumes proper current directory
)

Copy out plain .o files with cmake

I'm trying to get cmake (on linux) to create some static object (.o) files and install them to an external directory. To that end I have a list, object_sources, containing the project path of the sources, and put this in the top level CMakeLists.txt:
set(local_objects "")
foreach(file ${object_sources})
get_filename_component(cur ${file} NAME_WE)
add_library("${cur}.o" OBJECT ${file})
list(APPEND local_objects "${cur}.o")
# To confirm these variables are what I think they are:
message("---> ${cur} | ${file}")
endforeach()
install(
# Also tried FILES, see below.
TARGETS ${local_objects}
CONFIGURATIONS Debug
# Also tried nothing instead of 'OBJECTS' (same outcome)
# and LIBRARY (cmake fails on error).
OBJECTS
DESTINATION "/some/external/dir"
)
With regard to using FILES, it cannot work because in fact a foo.o is never created, so there is no point in me trying to get the correct project path.
When I get to the actual make command in the cmake build directory, it spits out Built target foo.o, etc., during the process. However, as mentioned, no foo.o is ever created anywhere, and the install creates an objects-Debug directory in /some/external/dir containing directories for each target using its name (e.g., foo.o/) and inside that some more nested directories at the bottom of which is the object I want, with the wrong name: foo.cpp.o.
Cmake can structure its build tree however it wants and name its temporaries whatever it likes, but I would really like to be able to ask for a final product object foo.o (not foo.cpp.o) and have it installed that way.
Is that possible? I'm beginning to think this is all very contrary to the (implicit) purposes of cmake, and that I should keep these kinds of tasks separate in a shell script or makefile (it takes about three lines in either), and just use cmake for the normative libs and executables.
Or: I believe I could get this to work if I created each object as a static archive (lib.a) instead, but part of the issue here is that would require modifying the build scripts of something else, or else extracting them via a script (in which case I might as well do the whole thing in the script).
I'm not aware of a good way to do this in CMake, but maybe the least fussy would be to use an OBJECT library. This would allow you to get the object files for a target using generator expressions, more specifically the TARGET_OBJECTS expression. This is a minimal example with a single foo.c file containing an empty main:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.11)
project(foo C)
set(SOURCES foo.c)
add_library(foo_obj OBJECT ${SOURCES})
add_executable(foo $<TARGET_OBJECTS:foo_obj>)
set(OBJS $<TARGET_OBJECTS:foo_obj>)
message(STATUS "these are my objects: ${OBJS}") # generator expression printed here, not evaluated yet
add_custom_target(print_foo_objs
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E echo $<TARGET_OBJECTS:foo_obj>)
set(OBJ_ROOT_DIR $<TARGET_PROPERTY:foo,BINARY_DIR>)
add_custom_target(copy_foo_objs
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E make_directory ${OBJ_ROOT_DIR}/myobjects/
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy_if_different $<TARGET_OBJECTS:foo_obj> ${OBJ_ROOT_DIR}/myobjects/
COMMAND_EXPAND_LISTS) # UPDATE
Please note that as a generator expression, you will not have access to it during configuration (hence, that message will contain the generator expression as it was textually declared), but only during the generation phase.
If you still need to rename the object files (i.e. from foo.c.o to foo.o) you can maybe call a custom external script to do that for you.
Moreover, there might be issues with cleanup, etc. which will force you to add more custom targets and/or commands (and associated dependencies) to deal with it. Another downside of this approach.
UPDATE: COMMAND_EXPAND_LISTS allows the expansion of lists in the generator expression and it was added in CMake 3.8 and later (see here).

CMake set default resource/asset directory

I'm trying to make a simple sfml/c++ application using cmake.
Suppose I need to refer to a simple foo.png somewhere in my code. I found out that I can only do so if it lies inside of the build folder. This is the folder from where I invoke the cmake .. command and where all of my cmake files (apart from CMakeLists.txt and library modules, such as FindSFML.cmake) reside.
I don't want it to look there... but in a folder that is called art, located in build's parent directory. I want to do this to keep the "build" folder not essential to the project (in the sense that anyone can build the project without relying on stuff that's inside of it).
From what I've seen - looking online, that is - everyone tends to suggest to use the file(COPY ...) command (or something similar) to copy all of the needed assets/resources inside of another folder similar to my before-mentioned build folder (I know there must be a technical term for this... build directory, perhaps?), and profit. But is this copying process really necessary? Shouldn't you be able to just specify a different directory from which to load your assets/resources?
Or maybe I've got it all wrong... cmake is just hard to understand sometimes. Thanks in advance and excuse my lack of technical knowledge.
I found a solution using symbolic links and the add_custom_command function.
Here it is (assuming the layout described above):
set (source "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/resources")
set (destination "${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/resources")
add_custom_command(
TARGET ${PROJECT_NAME} POST_BUILD
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E create_symlink ${source} ${destination}
DEPENDS ${destination}
COMMENT "symbolic link resources folder from ${source} => ${destination}"
)
I actually got this from a blog... here's the link to the article for good citizenship: http://qrikko.blogspot.it/2016/05/cmake-and-how-to-copy-resources-during.html
Have a nice day.

Can I manually use CMake's cpp file dependency-scanner in my cmake code?

I am trying to add a custom target with CMake that executes one command for each given .cpp file. The command should only be re-executed when the source file itself or one of the included source files changes. AFAIK to achieve this I need a list of all the included files and add them to the DEPENDS option of the add_custom_command() calls that belong to my custom target.
So is there a built-in way to get that list of included files?
I know about the IMPLICIT_DEPENDS option of the add_custom_command() function but it only works for Makefile generators. I would like to make this work for all generators.
Thank you for your time
Edit:
As requested I will post some cmake code to show what I want to achieve.
I want to add a custom target, that runs clang-tidy on all the given .cpp files. When incrementally building the custom target the clang-tidy commands should be re-run whenever a .cpp file or one of its directly or indirectly included header files is changed. Just like re-runs of the compiler are handled.
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# mainTargetName The name of the target that shall be analyzed
# files A list of all the main targets .cpp files
#
function( addStaticAnalysisTarget mainTargetName files )
set(targetName runStaticAnalysis_${mainTargetName})
set(command "clang-tidy-4.0 -checks=* -p ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}")
foreach( file ${files} )
get_filename_component( baseName ${file} NAME_WE)
set(stampFile ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/analyze_${baseName}.stamp )
set(fullFile ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/${file})
set(commandWithFile "${command} ${fullFile}")
separate_arguments_for_platform( commandList ${commandWithFile})
add_custom_command(
OUTPUT ${stampFile}
DEPENDS "${fullFile}"
IMPLICIT_DEPENDS CXX "${fullFile}"
COMMAND ${commandList}
COMMAND cmake -E touch "${stampFile}" # without creating a file as a touch-stone the command will always be re-run.
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CPPCODEBASE_ROOT_DIR}
COMMENT "${commandWithFile}"
VERBATIM
)
list(APPEND stampFiles ${stampFile})
endforeach()
set_source_files_properties(${stampFiles} PROPERTIES GENERATED TRUE) # make the stamp files known to cmake as generated files.
add_custom_target(
${targetName}
DEPENDS ${stampFiles}
)
endfunction()
The problem with that is, that it does not seem to work. When I change included files clang-tidy is not re-run for the affected files.
I used the "Unix Makefile" generator for this example so it should work at least with make. Any hints why it doesn't?
My hopes where that I could achieve the desired behavior for all generators by somehow getting the file-dependencies at cmake time and then adding them to the ''''DEPENDS'''' list. But the dependency scanning must be done each time the command is run, so it can not be done at cmake time. This means that the scanning must be implemented by cmake which it currently is not.
A guy with similar problems:
https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/issues/16830
Edit 2:
I think the problem that the IMPLICIT_DEPENDS option was not working was because I did not use correct filenames. I changed that in the code snipped, but I have not yet tested if it works in the project.
I think the answer to my question is ...
No, you can not use cmakes dependency scanner in the cmake code.
That makes sense, because this problem can not be solved at cmake time, because the dependencies of a .cpp file may change without cmake being re-run.
The problem must be solved within cmake itself at make time. This is done when using the IMPLICIT_DEPENDS option.
Also, I tried to solve a Problem that I did not really have, because at this point I can only run clang-tidy on linux anyways. However, clang-tidy may become available on windows as well and then I may have the problem again.
To sum the comments up:
Tambre stated that CMake is not a compiler and therefore can not do that.
I think this is wrong. According to this article, CMake can parse cpp include dependencies because make has no such dependency searcher itself. That was news to me, but I mostly live on Windows so I am not that familiar with make. It could also be possible that in the meantime make was extended to do its own dependency searching. Also this explains why the IMPLICIT_DEPENDS option is only available for make.
Florian pointed out that it is not necessary to create an own custom target for running clang-tidy. Instead, one can use the CXX_CLANG_TIDY target property to run clang-tidy for each file after compiling it. This means however, that static-analysis can not be separated from the build which could lead to inacceptable buildtimes.
There is the cmake -E cmake_depends command line, that could be used to retrieve dependencies at cmake time. But as stated above, I erroneously thought that I needed the dependencies at cmake time, while I needed them at runtime.
The IMPLICIT_DEPENDS options did not work because I had an error in my cmake code.

Copying assets directory from source to build directory in CMake

I am trying to write a game for practice in C++. I am using CMake for this, and my project gets built in a separate build directory automatically by my IDE. However, my assets folder is not being copied over to the new directory.
Currently, I am attempting to resolve this with the following:
add_custom_command(TARGET ${PROJECT_NAME}
POST_BUILD
COMMAND cp -r ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/assets ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}
)
However, this seems to have absolutely no effect on the outcome and the assets directory is still not present in my build directory.
How can I actually make it copy this asset directory to my build location? Is there a smarter way to point my program to my assets location (perhaps one that will also work with assets in /usr/share?)
After quite a while of more searching, I managed to find the file(COPY {files} DESTINATION {directory}) command:
file(COPY assets DESTINATION ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR})
Two ways I've found, both ensuring that it copies on target build and stays up to date even if the target doesn't need to re-build.
The first uses the CMake command line tool copy_directory. It's unclear from the documentation whether this copy always happens, regardless if files in the assets directory were updated or not, or if it only copies when the asset files don't exist or an asset file was updated:
add_custom_target(copy_assets
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy_directory ${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/assets ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/assets
)
add_dependencies(mytarget copy_assets)
The second requires a small additional CMake script file, but it allows us to use the file(COPY ...) CMake comamnd, which states in the documentation that "copying preserves input file timestamps, and optimizes out a file if it exists at the destination with the same timestamp."
First, create the CMake script file copy-assets.cmake in the same directory as your CMakeLists.txt, with the contents being (similar to Ethan McTague's answer)
file(COPY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/assets DESTINATION ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR})
And then in your CMakeLists.txt, add the following:
add_custom_target(copy_assets
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -P ${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/copy-assets.cmake
)
add_dependencies(mytarget copy_assets)
The solution above using add_custom_target is suitable for most cases, but has a few problems.
Does not support dependent generator expressions (e.g. $<TARGET_FILE_DIR:tgt>)
Re-copies every build (slow for numerous/large files)
Is not particularly readable, especially for copying from multiple locations
Instead, I've been using file GENERATE
set(ASSETS
assetfile
...)
foreach(ASSET ${ASSETS})
file(GENERATE OUTPUT ${ASSET} INPUT ${ASSET})
endforeach()
Note I haven't needed generator expressions yet, but it looks like the latest version of CMake (3.19) adds generator expression support to this function.
Here is what I do with vulkan shaders. Simply replace the compilation step with a copy command:
macro(add_shaders)
cmake_parse_arguments("MY" "TARGET" "SOURCES" ${ARGN})
foreach(src ${MY_SOURCES})
set(OUTF "${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/shaders/${src}.spv")
get_filename_component(PARENT_DIR "${OUTF}" DIRECTORY)
add_custom_command(
OUTPUT "${OUTF}"
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E make_directory "${PARENT_DIR}"
COMMAND "${Vulkan_GLSLC_EXECUTABLE}" "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/${src}" -o "${OUTF}"
DEPENDS "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/${src}"
VERBATIM
)
# src in order to get listed in the IDE, OUTF to declare the build relationship
target_sources("${MY_TARGET}" PRIVATE "${src}" "${OUTF}")
endforeach()
endmacro()
add_shaders(TARGET my_target SOURCES asset1 asset2 asset3 ...)
You'll have to specify each asset on its own (or loop over a list). Including wildcards into a build is a bad idea [tm]. This will also only copy/process stuff if it has changed.