How to Add Linux Compilation to Cmake Project in Visual Studio - c++

Question

Visual Studio has added lots of new features for C++ in the past year.
CMake
With the CMake support, I can do "Open Folder" and select a folder with a CMakeLists.txt file in it. Visual Studio does a lot of nice work in discovering and building it automatically.
Linux Compilation
Visual studio now supports remote compilation on Linux over SSH. Several tutorials show how users can create a new "Linux Console Application" in Visual Studio, and it will automatically ask to setup an SSH connection to be used for building it. I don't see any instructions for how to do this on an existing project of any kind.
Particularly with a CMake project, is it possible to open a CMake folder in Visual Studio 2017 and have it built over on a remote Linux machine? IfSoHow?

Answer 1

There is no build-in support for a VS "Linux Console Application" in CMake yet (as for CMake version 3.9).
Edit: Visual Studio 2017 15.4 now comes with something similar without generating actual .vcxproj files. See Visual C++ for Linux Development with CMake
With a standard CMake version besides the possibilities described here using existing .vcxproj files as a template, you can only trick CMake into generating those project types:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.7)
project(HelloLinux)
file(WRITE main.cpp [=[
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
std::cout << "Hello from Linux Console!" << std::endl;
}
]=])
add_executable(HelloLinux "main.cpp")
set_target_properties(
HelloLinux
PROPERTIES
VS_GLOBAL_KEYWORD "Linux"
VS_GLOBAL_ApplicationType "Linux"
VS_GLOBAL_ApplicationTypeRevision "1.0"
VS_GLOBAL_TargetLinuxPlatform "Generic"
VS_GLOBAL_LinuxProjectType "{D51BCBC9-82E9-4017-911E-C93873C4EA2B}"
)
This actually works and produces a Linux .vcxproj project that is accepted by VS. But since we sidestepped CMake here, none of the other compiler/linker options you define in your CMake script will be assigned.
So my recommendation is to raise a feature request for CMake itself to directly support this (e.g. via platform toolset option Remote_GCC_1_0).

Answer 2

It does not seem to work as you expect, yet. It seems you need to create separate linux vcproject for your existing cmake codebase. There is nothing like linux target in VS options. For more information see comments in this msdn blog.
You may either create 'new linux project' and copy your sources or try (and adapt) using for existing sources these unofficial scripts:
https://github.com/robotdad/vclinux