Dynamic compiler path in c_cpp_properties.json VSCode settings file - c++

I have a c_cpp_properties.json in my .vscode folder, and it's working properly. However, there is a line in it that is system specific:
"compilerPath": "~/.espressif/tools/xtensa-esp32-elf/esp-2021r2-patch5-8.4.0/xtensa-esp32-elf/bin/xtensa-esp32-elf-gcc"
And while I can assume default install for the .espressif tools, unfortunately the distributor of the toolchain changes the path on every version (I.e. .../esp-2021r2-patch5-8.4.0/...)
I'm wondering if there's a way to use something like
which xtensa-esp32-elf-gcc
in the json so this will update with the toolchain updates?

I'll start by mentioning that the most easiest way to do this is via the creation / or update of a symbolic link in /usr/bin as rioV8 mentioned in the comments.
The command which xyz will look through the path environment variable anyway, so unless you have a symbolic link under one of the paths listed in path, it won't be as easy.
That being said I can imagine that you may want to (for some specific reason) switch the compiler from time to time (for example when debugging historic versions) and for example you do this by having predefined environments where you specify the path.
So to do this I looked into how VS Code's CMake Tools parse the c_cpp_properties.json file and passing anything other than a string to compilerPath doesn't look like a good idea, however if we take a look at Lines 430-451 of this file. We can see what has priority when deciding which CXX / C compiler to use.
Based on that - what you can do is go to your CMakeLists.txt file and before you define the project you can add this snippet for your own CXX search:
execute_process(COMMAND your_script_or_command_to_get_cxx_path_here RESULT_VARIABLE which_cxx OUTPUT_STRIP_TRAILING_WHITESPACE)
set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER ${which_cxx})
project(TEST)
#... rest of your CMakeLists.txt
For example:
execute_process(COMMAND which g++ RESULT_VARIABLE which_cxx OUTPUT_STRIP_TRAILING_WHITESPACE)
After you clean and generate a new build folder, it should override whatever is in c_cpp_properties.json
But in all honesty, I would just stick to the symbolic link.

Related

Is there "includePath" option in clangd?

I used to work with VSCode C/C++ extension. there was a feature in this extension(in a json file), called "includePath", which I could set the paths for my headers, so without execution of CMake or make, I would have the suggestion of my headers and code completion from those.
now I have switched to neovim and clangd as the language server for code completion. I searched a lot to find the corresponding feature in clangd options but I could not find anything more than this link.
since the clangd is a powerful language server, I am in wonder if there is not such a feature in it. so I want to know is there actually such a feature in clangd? and if YES how can I use that?
Note: I use a language client, called "coc-clangd". I don't know if it matters or not.
Clangd uses compile_commands.json database file which contains flags (such as include directories) for each file in project. But this file is auto-generated, so all modifications to it will be overwritten eventually. You can ask CMake to add any custom compile flags with -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS command line argument.
Example for system headers (#include <file.h>):
cmake -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-isystem /path/to/includes" /path/to/source
For project headers (#include "file.h"):
cmake -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS=-Ipath/to/includes /path/to/source
Additionally, you can set CXXFLAGS environment variable:
export CXXFLAGS="-isystem /path/to/includes"
cmake path/to/sources
After that new flags should appear in your compile_commands.json file.
Maybe this is useful: https://clangd.llvm.org/config
Create a file called '.clangd' in the top-level of the source directory.
Add those content.
CompileFlags: # Tweak the parse settings
Add:
- "-I=[folder]"
But I think this is not recommend, all include directories should be add in CMakeLists.txt file.
You can add includePath to clangd.fallbackFlags into vscode's settings.json like this:
"clangd.fallbackFlags": [
"-I${workspaceFolder}/include",
"-I/my/include"
]
To use code completion provided by Clangd, let Clangd retrieve include paths from compiler_commands.json with compiler calls used by CMake. Set the CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS option in CMakeLists.txt, it will output compiler_commands.json to the build directory when CMake is run:
set(CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS ON)
Copy the generated compiler_commands.json to the project source directory. Clangd will now source this file.

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.

CMake not building a library when added as a subdirectory

I added the xgboost library as a git submodule of my project and I'm trying to add it to cmake as a subdirectory. Unfortunately it's not working. A simple hello world project with the following CMakeLists.txt replicates the error that I'm getting.
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.2)
project(foo)
add_subdirectory(xgboost)
add_executable(${PROJECT_NAME} foo.cpp)
target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} xgboost)
After building the library there is nothing in the xgboost/lib directory so I get the following error.
clang: error: no such file or directory:
'/Users/.../myproject/xgboost/lib/libxgboost.dylib'
I think that the problem is generated in their CMakeLists file since they have two different targets. Maybe cmake is choosing the wrong target but I'm not familiar enough with cmake to figure it out. The following code is from xgboost's CMakeLists.
# Executable
add_executable(runxgboost $<TARGET_OBJECTS:objxgboost> src/cli_main.cc)
set_target_properties(runxgboost PROPERTIES
OUTPUT_NAME xgboost
)
set_output_directory(runxgboost ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR})
target_link_libraries(runxgboost ${LINK_LIBRARIES})
# Shared library
add_library(xgboost SHARED $<TARGET_OBJECTS:objxgboost>)
target_link_libraries(xgboost ${LINK_LIBRARIES})
set_output_directory(xgboost ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/lib)
#Ensure these two targets do not build simultaneously, as they produce outputs with conflicting names
add_dependencies(xgboost runxgboost)
My questions in order of importance are:
Is there any way to fix it without modifying xgboost's CMakeLists.txt file?
Is it reasonable to try to add xgboost to my project as a git submodule?
Is there any reason cmake is not instructing to build the library?
Note: There were several edits to this question since I tried to narrow down the problem and to provide more information.
(I would love to ask for few things beforehand in the comment section, but I have too low reputation to do so, so I will just give it a shot ;))
I have few suspects, and one of them is ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR} of the submodule's root CMakeLists.txt. Although the paths are set properly when you run that CMakeLists.txt alone, cmake gets confused the moment you add it as your subdirectory. Have you looked into another directories for your output binaries?
First I would suggest testing this hypothesis, and then I would suggest writing similar, but separate CMakeLists.txt file for xgboost library, and then substitute it in the project temporarily. Unfortunately the CMakeLists.txt filename is hardcoded and there is no possibility to have two files of that kind in one directory; so it seems that the answer to 1) is, that you rather have to change the file.
For the 2): as long as it does not require huge additional logic in your CMakeLists.txt, it makes sense. Other viable option is to create an install target, which you can use to install your xgboost library locally (using CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX(doc) variable), and then add the installation path to your CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH(doc).

How do I add objects with a custom extension to a cmake library?

I'd like to add some object files to a CMake static library, but they have a custom extension.
Here's what I've tried:
set(SRCS testfile.cxx jsobj.js)
add_library(testlib STATIC ${SRCS})
When made, CMake invokes ar testfile.cxx.o (ie the other file is completely ignored). How do I get it included in the archive? Here are some other tricks I've tried:
list(APPEND CMAKE_CXX_SOURCE_FILE_EXTENSIONS js)
list(APPEND CMAKE_C_SOURCE_FILE_EXTENSIONS js) # no luck
add_custom_command(OUTPUT ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/jsobj.js.o
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/jsobj.js
${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/jsobj.js.o
DEPENDS ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/jsobj.js.o) # still no luck
(In case you're interested, I'm using the emscripten compiler, which can accept C/C++ files as source input, and JavaScript files are essentially "precompiled objects". I want to find a way to get CMake to add them to the ar commandline, that's all!)
For the record, this is how I solved my problem in a hacky way: "proper" solutions would be gladly accepted.
I made up a new file extension for my special pre-compiled objects, "jso", then added it to the list of input files CMake understands:
list(APPEND CMAKE_CXX_SOURCE_FILE_EXTENSIONS jso)
Then, I add my object files with the extension ".jso" to the CMake sources for inclusion in a static library target.
Finally, I hacked the compiler by setting CC=mycc, where mycc is a Python script which checks if the input has the extension ".jso": if not, it simply re-invokes the standard compiler; otherwise it copies the input to the output with no changes at all, so that mycc -c input.jso -o output.jso.o is just a file copy.
This isn't pretty, but it picks up all the dependencies perfectly for incremental builds. I can't pretend it's pretty, but doing things the way CMake likes seems to work. Here, we're just pretending all inputs are source files, even if they're actually already compiled.

How to Use CCache with CMake?

I would like to do the following: If CCache is present in PATH, use "ccache g++" for compilation, else use g++. I tried writing a small my-cmake script containing
CC="ccache gcc" CXX="ccache g++" cmake $*
but it does not seem to work (running make still does not use ccache; I checked this using CMAKE_VERBOSE_MAKEFILE on).
Update:
As per this link I tried changing my script to
cmake -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER="ccache" -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ARG1="g++" -D CMAKE_C_COMPILER="ccache" -D CMAKE_C_COMPILER_ARG1="gcc" $*
but cmake bails out complaining that a test failed on using the compiler ccache (which can be expected).
As of CMAKE 3.4 you can do:
-DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_LAUNCHER=ccache
It is now possible to specify ccache as a launcher for compile commands and link commands (since cmake 2.8.0). That works for Makefile and Ninja generator. To do this, just set the following properties :
find_program(CCACHE_FOUND ccache)
if(CCACHE_FOUND)
set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY RULE_LAUNCH_COMPILE ccache)
set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY RULE_LAUNCH_LINK ccache) # Less useful to do it for linking, see edit2
endif(CCACHE_FOUND)
It is also possible to set these properties only for specific directories or targets.
For Ninja, this is possible since version 3.4.
For XCode, Craig Scott gives a workaround in his answer.
Edit : Thanks to uprego and Lekensteyn's comment, I edited the answer to check if ccache is available before using it as launcher and for which generators is it possible to use a compile launcher.
Edit2: #Emilio Cobos recommended to avoid doing that for the linking part as ccache doesn't improve linking speed and can mess with other types of cache like sccache
I personally have /usr/lib/ccache in my $PATH. This directory contains loads of symlinks for every possible name the compiler could be called from (like gcc and gcc-4.3), all pointing to ccache.
And I didn't even create the symlinks. That directory comes pre-filled when I install ccache on Debian.
From CMake 3.1, it is possible to use ccache with the Xcode generator and Ninja is supported from CMake 3.4 onwards. Ninja will honour RULE_LAUNCH_COMPILE just like the Unix Makefiles generator (so #Babcool's answer gets you there for Ninja too), but getting ccache working for the Xcode generator takes a little more work. The following article explains the method in detail, focussing on a general implementation which works for all three CMake generators and making no assumptions about setting up ccache symlinks or the underlying compiler used (it still lets CMake decide the compiler):
https://crascit.com/2016/04/09/using-ccache-with-cmake/
The general gist of the article is as follows. The start of your CMakeLists.txt file should be set up something like this:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)
find_program(CCACHE_PROGRAM ccache)
if(CCACHE_PROGRAM)
# Support Unix Makefiles and Ninja
set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY RULE_LAUNCH_COMPILE "${CCACHE_PROGRAM}")
endif()
project(SomeProject)
get_property(RULE_LAUNCH_COMPILE GLOBAL PROPERTY RULE_LAUNCH_COMPILE)
if(RULE_LAUNCH_COMPILE AND CMAKE_GENERATOR STREQUAL "Xcode")
# Set up wrapper scripts
configure_file(launch-c.in launch-c)
configure_file(launch-cxx.in launch-cxx)
execute_process(COMMAND chmod a+rx
"${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/launch-c"
"${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/launch-cxx")
# Set Xcode project attributes to route compilation through our scripts
set(CMAKE_XCODE_ATTRIBUTE_CC "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/launch-c")
set(CMAKE_XCODE_ATTRIBUTE_CXX "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/launch-cxx")
set(CMAKE_XCODE_ATTRIBUTE_LD "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/launch-c")
set(CMAKE_XCODE_ATTRIBUTE_LDPLUSPLUS "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/launch-cxx")
endif()
The two script template files launch-c.in and launch-cxx.in look like this (they should be in the same directory as the CMakeLists.txt file):
launch-c.in:
#!/bin/sh
export CCACHE_CPP2=true
exec "${RULE_LAUNCH_COMPILE}" "${CMAKE_C_COMPILER}" "$#"
launch-cxx.in:
#!/bin/sh
export CCACHE_CPP2=true
exec "${RULE_LAUNCH_COMPILE}" "${CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER}" "$#"
The above uses RULE_LAUNCH_COMPILE alone for Unix Makefiles and Ninja, but for the Xcode generator it relies on help from CMake's CMAKE_XCODE_ATTRIBUTE_... variables support. The setting of the CC and CXX user-defined Xcode attributes to control the compiler command and LD and LDPLUSPLUS for the linker command is not, as far as I can tell, a documented feature of Xcode projects, but it does seem to work. If anyone can confirm it is officially supported by Apple, I'll update the linked article and this answer accordingly.
I didn't like to set a symlink from g++ to ccache. And CXX="ccache g++" didn't work for me as some cmake test case wanted to have just the compiler program without attributes.
So I used a small bash script instead:
#!/bin/bash
ccache g++ "$#"
and saved it as an executable in /usr/bin/ccache-g++.
Then C configured cmake to use /usr/bin/ccache-g++ as C++ compiler.
This way it passes the cmake test cases and I feel more comfortable than having symlinks that I might forget about in 2 or 3 weeks and then maybe wonder if something doesn't work...
I verified the following works (source: this link):
CC="gcc" CXX="g++" cmake -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER="ccache" -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ARG1="g++" -D CMAKE_C_COMPILER="ccache" -D CMAKE_C_COMPILER_ARG1="gcc" $*
Update: I later realized that even this does not work. Strangely it works every alternate time (the other times cmake complains).
Let me add one important item that was not mentioned here before.
While bootstrapping a minimalistic build system from the ubuntu:18.04 docker image, I've found that order of installation makes a difference.
In my case ccache worked fine when calling gcc, but failed to catch invocations of the same compiler by the other names: cc and c++.
To fully install ccache, you need to make sure all compilers are installed first, or add a call to update-ccache symlinks to be safe.
sudo /usr/sbin/update-ccache-symlinks
export PATH="/usr/lib/ccache/:$PATH"```
... and then (due to updated symlinks) also calls to cc and c++ get caught!
In my opinion the best way is to symlink gcc,g++ to ccache, but if you would like to use within cmake, try this:
export CC="ccache gcc" CXX="ccache g++" cmake ...
Here are 2 methods I think are clean/robust, and also don't pollute your CMake code.
1.) Set environment variables
This method is nice since you don't have to individually set it up for each CMake project. The con is you may not want ccache for each CMake project.
# Requires CMake 3.17 (https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/envvar/CMAKE_LANG_COMPILER_LAUNCHER.html)
export CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_LAUNCHER=/usr/bin/ccache
export CMAKE_C_COMPILER_LAUNCHER=/usr/bin/ccache
2.) Pass in cache variables during project configuration
Con a bit annoying to do for each project. This can be negated by your IDE though.
# Requires CMake 3.4
$ cmake ... -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_LAUNCHER=/usr/bin/ccache \
-D CMAKE_C_COMPILER_LAUNCHER=/usr/bin/ccache
NOTE: It isn't really necessary to specify the full path.
If ccache is in your path you can just specify ccache instead.
export CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_LAUNCHER=ccache
export CMAKE_C_COMPILER_LAUNCHER=ccache
It is extending #Nicolas answer.
Add following line to your cmake file:
list(PREPEND CMAKE_PROGRAM_PATH /usr/lib/ccache)
Or add it as argument to cmake configuration step:
cmake -DCMAKE_PROGRAM_PATH=/usr/lib/ccache