How to know variable such as 'OpenCV' in CMake - c++

I am using OpenCV with gcc and cmake. And I found a tutorial https://docs.opencv.org/3.4.0/db/df5/tutorial_linux_gcc_cmake.html .In the file CMakeLists.txt, there are some variables such as OpenCV and OpenCV_INCLUDE_DIRS.
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.9)
project(VideoRecord)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)
find_package(OpenCV REQUIRED)
include_directories(${OpenCV_INCLUDE_DIRS})
add_executable(VideoRecord main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(VideoRecord ${OpenCV_LIBS})
I want to know where to find these variables definition.
EDIT
Thanks #qbranchmaster's answer. I tried to search FindOpenCV.cmake but failed.
First try.
➜ ~ cmake --help-module-list | grep "FindOpen"
FindOpenACC
FindOpenAL
FindOpenCL
FindOpenGL
FindOpenMP
FindOpenSSL
FindOpenSceneGraph
FindOpenThreads
Another try.
➜ / find . "FindOpenCV.cmake"
In addition, my os is osx and I install cmake with brew. I comiple and install OpenCV manually.

These variables are part of the package config script shipping with OpenCV.
Note that find_package is a two-headed beast. The classic mode of operation is finding libraries through find-scripts. This is still the approach being used today for third-party libraries that are not aware of CMake. However, if your dependency is itself being built with CMake, it can provide a package config file instead, which allows for a more powerful mode of operation.
The idea here is that instead of you telling CMake how to find a dependency, the dependency itself tells CMake how clients can find it. This is the approach that is taken by libraries like OpenCV and Qt.
To answer your question, those variables are being set by the package config file in your local OpenCV installation, the template of which can be found in the OpenCV source code under cmake/templates/OpenCVConfig.cmake.in.

They are defined in CMake OpenCV module. CMake has numerous modules that aid in finding various libraries like OpenCV (FindOpenCV.cmake module).
Using this command you can get a list of modules that your CMake supports:
cmake --help-module-list
Some libraries come with their own *.cmake modules which should be installed in some system path. If you are using Ubuntu, your cmake modules should be localised in:
/usr/share/cmake/Modules/
If not, just search system for file FindOpenCV.cmake. In that file you will find these variables.

In general, you get variable names from the documentation or source code of the package you want to find.
Often you can derive the name to put into find_package from the provided FindFoo.cmake module file name, because "Foo" would be the name. The find module is either part of CMake or comes with the third-party library.
If there is no find module, some modules provide FooConfig.cmake files, where "Foo" is again the string to put into find_package.
If you have neither a find nor a config file, you need to find the library by other means, e.g., FindPkgConfig or find_library / find_file.

Related

Build uWebSockets on Windows 10 with CMake

I want to use uWebSockets(UWS) in my C++ project to transfer images over the network. The setup will be running on multiple operating systems, so the best way of creating the build files seemed like using CMake.
However, I am new to CMake and having a hard time building UWS. I don't understand how to start working with the official repository on Windows 10, so I found another repository that includes a CMakeFiles.txt file and some of the dependencies (openssl, zlib, libuv, but it doesn't include uSockets for some reason). The root CMakeFiles.txt includes:
[...]
find_package(OpenSSL REQUIRED)
find_package(ZLIB REQUIRED)
find_path(LIBUV_INCLUDE_DIR uv.h)
find_library(LIBUV_LIBRARY NAMES uv uv1)
[...]
It looks straightforward, but when I try to run mkdir build && cd build; cmake .., it cannot find OpenSSL. Here is the error message it spits out:
[...]
[cmake] Could not find a package configuration file provided by "OpenSSL" with any
[cmake] of the following names:
[cmake]
[cmake] OpenSSLConfig.cmake
[cmake] openssl-config.cmake
[...]
The above error message suggests that I need to set up a config file for each of these libraries. Yet, if I understand the find_package docs correctly, the command itself searches the library in various locations under the root folder. What kind of a folder structure does the find_package need in order to work?
More generally, am I wasting my time with this alternative repo? Is there a better way of using UWS with Windows 10? The official repo has a question about how to use it on Windows but I don't understand how that's an answer to the question. It only points to this page where it says any specific build systems will not officially be supported.
Any help would be appreciated.
Importing dependencies with add_subdirectory seems like a good way around this. When I ran cmake, I was receiving LNK2019 Error. I realized the following code snippet I found online was causing the problem, and the system works when I delete it.
if(MSVC)
set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS_DEBUG "${CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS_DEBUG} /NODEFAULTLIB:libcmt.lib /NODEFAULTLIB:msvcrt.lib")
set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "${CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS} /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS")
endif()

CMake "find_package" command on a package that was not installed is unexpectedly successful

I am following chapter-02/recipe-06 in "CMake Cookbook". This particular example requires the Eigen C++ libraries.
I attempted to build the example and got the error that Eigen was not found.
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:9 (find_package):
Could not find a package configuration file provided by "Eigen3" (requested
version 3.3) with any of the following names:
Eigen3Config.cmake
eigen3-config.cmake
Add the installation prefix of "Eigen3" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set
"Eigen3_DIR" to a directory containing one of the above files. If "Eigen3"
provides a separate development package or SDK, be sure it has been
installed.
This was expected because the library was not installed on my system.
I then downloaded the ".zip" file for the Eigen libraries and unzipped it to an arbitrary location outside of my project. I created a "build" folder in the Eigen directory and ran cmake .. in the "build" folder. (I only ran cmake - I did NOT build or install the package.)
After running CMake on the Eigen build directory, I went back to the example code for "recipe-06" and it was magically able to find the Eigen library and built successfully even though Eigen was never built or installed.
Somehow just running CMake in the Eigen project made CMake aware of the Eigen libraries location. After doing this, any projects that do find_package to find Eigen3 somehow get the ${Eigen3_DIR} variable defined and are able to find it.
Looking at the CMake documentation for find_package I don't see any explanation of why this works. Eigen is not in any of the typical locations that find_package searches. According to the documentation it looks like it should NOT be found.
Even more interesting - it doesn't matter where I put Eigen on my system. I can put it literally anywhere and it will still find it.
According to everything I see in the documentation it should not be found... but it is found. So the question is how? Why does this work?
Additional info: I am using CMake version 3.13.3
There are 2 "origins" of XXXConfig.cmake files, used internally by find_package() call.
Usually, XXXConfig.cmake file is produced when the project is installed, and the file contains information about installed libraries and headers.
But CMake provides also an export() command, which allows to export build tree.
export(PACKAGE <name>)
Store the current build directory in the CMake user package registry for package <name>. The find_package command may consider the directory while searching for package <name>.
Eigen's CMakeLists.txt uses export() command, so the project becomes detectable with find_package just after running cmake for Eigen.

CMake find_package for FindLibXml2

I'm trying to create a CMake file that will detect the location of libxml2. From what see in examples and CMake documentation the find_package simply works. I'm running CLion on Ubuntu, the libxml2 is installed using apt-get, the FindLibXml2.cmake is located under CMake's modules. However CMake returns cryptic message:
Could not find a package configuration file provided by "FindLibXml2"
with any of the following names:
FindLibXml2Config.cmake
findlibxml2-config.cmake
Add the installation prefix of "FindLibXml2" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or
set "FindLibXml2_DIR" to a directory containing one of the above
files. If "FindLibXml2" provides a separate development package or
SDK, be sure it has been installed.
Why it is trying to find this -config file? what I'm doing wrong?
CMake snippet
find_package(FindLibXml2 CONFIG REQUIRED)
I've also tried
find_package(FindLibXml2 REQUIRED)
Not sure which one to use
You should not have the Find in FindLibXml2; do:
find_package(LibXml2 REQUIRED)
As explained in the documentation:
CMake searches for a file called Find<package>.cmake

How do I include packages in different directory with CMake?

I am trying to compile a piece of C++ code on a server with CentOS. I need to include a library (NLopt) that is installed as a module at the location "/services/tools". I have tried "module load NLopt", but CMake does still not find the library.
What do I need to do to make CMake find the package?
"By default, [it] installs the NLopt static library (libnlopt.a) in /usr/local/lib and the NLopt header file (nlopt.h) in /usr/local/include, as well manual pages and a few other files."
So, you can include the header as
include_directories("/usr/local/include")
and link the library as
target_link_libraries(project "/usr/local/lib/lbnlopt.a")
Ideally you could try to find a CMake find module for the library.
Assuming your libraries are in /service/tools/lib and the headers in /service/tools/include, you can also set CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH, like this:
list(APPEND CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH /service/tools)

How to export libraries with components in CMAKE?

I have tried finding this information on the official CMAKE wiki as well as searching SO (currently waiting for boost to download so I can wade through the source looking for how they do it). I was hoping someone here may be able to help with how this is done, or point me in the right direction to the answers!
I have a project that has several components. Right now, the project has subdirectories for libraries, and for applications. I am attempting to refactor the project and have applications in individual repositories and have the libraries exported.
How do other projects make it possible to use the following command (specifically, specifying which components):
FIND_PACKAGE (Boost REQUIRED COMPONENTS system date_time filesystem)
I would like to use the same system for my own project:
FIND_PACKAGE (Project REQUIRED COMPONENTS view gui execution analysis)
Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
A good guide on how to write finders you may find in CMake documentation (old CMake packages for popular distros had /usr/share/cmake/Modules/readme.txt file, but it seems nowadays it's absent or doesn't have any helpful info anymore ;-). Particularly it explains how to write a correct module w/ supporting "standard" syntax (REQUIRE, COMPONENTS & etc) using find_package_handle_standard_args. This is applicable for non-CMake-based packages and turns the find_package into module mode.
For CMake-based projects, there is a better (native) way to export targets (aka config mode of the find_package). The modern CMake can help you to generate the needed *.cmake files, and your project ought to install() 'em into a proper location. So, dependent projects could use find_package() to import your targets (libraries or executables).
How to find packages, and also how to write your own find modules is described here:
http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake:How_To_Find_Libraries
here is a very simple find module of mine. It´s located in the top dir where all my librarys are located, so in this case finding the correct paths is rather trivial.
# AsmjitConfig.cmake
# - Config file for the Asmjit package
# sets:
# Asmjit_FOUND
# Asmjit_INCLUDE_DIR
# Asmjit_LIBRARIES
set(Asmjit_FOUND FALSE)
find_library(Asmjit_LIBRARY NAMES asmjit HINTS ${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/asmjit)
find_path(Asmjit_INCLUDE_DIR asmjit/asmjit.h HINTS ${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/asmjit/src)
message(STATUS "${Asmjit_INCLUDE_DIR}")
message(STATUS "${Asmjit_LIBRARY}")
if(NOT Asmjit_LIBRARY OR NOT Asmjit_INCLUDE_DIR)
set(Asmjit_FOUND FALSE)
else()
set(Asmjit_FOUND TRUE)
endif()
in your CMakeLists.txt tell cmake where it can find your modules:
set(CMAKE_MODULE_PATH ${CMAKE_MODULE_PATH} "path/to/librarys")
after that find_package should work just fine.