I would like to build an executable from static libraries (i. e. .a-files) only. This is possible, because the main() function is contained in one of these libraries.
The add_executable() function requires me to provide at least one source file. But this is not what I want to do.
There is no way to do it without a hack. You need at least one *.c or *.cpp file.
What I do is make a dummy null.cpp file (zero bytes) and use that. You can also use /dev/null but that only works on Linux.
file(WRITE null.cpp "")
add_executable(tester
null.cpp
)
target_link_libraries(tester
-Wl,--whole-archive
libtest1
libtest2
libtest3
libtest4
-Wl,--no-whole-archive
gtest_main
)
There are mainly two reasons why a source file is enforced by CMake:
To determine the LINKER_LANGUAGE from the file ending(s)
Not all compilers do support an object/library only link step (for details see below)
And if you move the main() function to library please keep the following in mind: Why does the order in which libraries are linked sometimes cause errors in GCC?
So if you build the libraries with CMake in the same project, I would recommend to change your libraries (at least the one containing your main() function) to an object library:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.8)
project(NoSourceForExe)
file(WRITE main.cc "int main() { return 0; }")
add_library(MyLibrary OBJECT main.cc)
add_executable(MyExecutable $<TARGET_OBJECTS:MyLibrary>)
The add_library() documentation lists a warning here:
Some native build systems may not like targets that have only object files, so consider adding at least one real source file to any target that references $<TARGET_OBJECTS:objlib>.
But those are rare and listed in Tests/ObjectLibrary/CMakeLists.txt:
# VS 6 and 7 generators do not add objects as sources so we need a
# dummy object to convince the IDE to build the targets below.
...
# Xcode does not seem to support targets without sources.
Not knowing which host OS(s) you are targeting, you may just give it a try.
References
CMake Object Lib containing main
CMake/Tutorials/Object Library
Related
So from what I understand, a static compiled mylib.a file should just be usable as plug-and-play. But I can't use it without the source code, I'm trying to avoid that.
I adapted this tutorial to compile using CMake with the following directory structure:
/
lib
libmy_math.a
main.cpp
my_math.h
my_math.cpp
CMakeLists.txt
The contents of the files are exactly as in the tutorial. The only added file is CMakeLists.txt which basically just runs the library compiling part before building:
CMakeLists.txt
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.21)
project(Test)
### Uncomment this ONCE to compile a libmy_math.a file
# add_library(my_math STATIC my_math.cpp)
add_executable(Test main.cpp)
find_library(MY_MATH_LIB my_math HINTS ./lib)
target_link_libraries(Test PUBLIC ${MY_MATH_LIB})
As the CMake file says, uncommenting Line 5 compiles the library, which is then linked to my code when compiling.
I'm trying to package my code so that I don't show my client the source code for the compiled library (my_math), but if I delete the my_math.h and my_math.cpp files, I get a "file not found" error on import:
/Users/Joe/Desktop/Test/main.cpp:1:10: fatal error: 'my_math.h' file not found
#include "my_math.h"
^~~~~~~~~~~
I thought you could compile libraries without needing the source code. What am I missing here?
A static library does not contain each and every definition a header can contain - think of macros, etc. Thus you still need the header. However, you don't need the .cpp anymore to link the library.
Besides the problem stated in Iorro's answer the find_library call here will not work as expected.
find_library(MY_MATH_LIB my_math HINTS ./lib)
target_link_libraries(Test PUBLIC ${MY_MATH_LIB})
What this does is, while running CMake, look for the my_math.a file. However, at that point of the build process, my_math.a has not been built yet. You're just running CMake for the first time, so all you have is source files. Nothing has been compiled yet.
What you want to do instead is link to the library target directly, as CMake already knows about that and can resolve the dependency on its own. So you need to replace the two lines above with:
target_link_libraries(Test PUBLIC my_math)
This now introduces a curious asymmetry in how your test consumes the library (as it is part of the same build) vs. how your clients consume the same library (which are not part of the same build and thus need to do a find_package call before they can use it). Look at CMake's config-file packages for a mechanism that allows you to restore symmetry here, at the cost of a significant amount of boilerplate required in your CMake script.
In a large CMake/C++ project our major library target Foo is being added. It has many statically linked dependencies that are provided as absolute-paths to target_link_libraries(). Now I'm writing the CMake to export this library once built, including the generated CMake so a library consumer can simply use CMake find_package(). However the generated FooTargets.cmake is embeding the absolute-paths of the link-libraries instead of just the library names.
Additionally, I've already created an add_library(BarCommon INTERFACE), to wrap up the referenced 3rd-party static libs separately and that seems to be working and the client-application consumed it. That accounts for 90% of the libraries also mentioned by FOO. So really FOO's exported INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES should be about 3 file names instead of 40 absolute-pathnames.
I'm confused, why is the target_link_libraries(FOO PRIVATE ${libs} is defining the exported 'INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES' property?
I would like that generated INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES property to be only library filenames, and optimally have finer control over which filenames end up in it. How do I control this?
Code:
Inside a large CMake Macro for generating targets we have this:
-
I call it to create library/target FOO.
_TARGET_ARGS_LIB_DEPENDS will resolve to ABSOLUTE FILE PATHNAMES for about 40 statically linked library dependencies.
add_library(${TargetName} STATIC ${AllSources} ${_TARGET_ARGS_OBJ_FILES})
<snip>
target_link_libraries(${TargetName}
PRIVATE
$<${GCC}:-Wl,--start-group>
${_TARGET_ARGS_LIB_DEPENDS}
$<${GCC}:-Wl,--end-group>
)
where that longish function returns I have just added these blocks:
target_link_directories(FOO
INTERFACE
$<BUILD_INTERFACE:${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}>
$<INSTALL_INTERFACE:foo/lib>
)
target_include_directories(FOO
INTERFACE
$<BUILD_INTERFACE:${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}>
$<INSTALL_INTERFACE:foo/include>
)
install(TARGETS Foo
EXPORT
FooTargets
DESTINATION
foo/lib
)
There is some more 'install' boilerplate at the end of my CMakeLists.txt
After I run CMAKE, build the project and run the 'INSTALL' target CMake generated from Visual Studio I can examine generated file: local_install\Release\Windows\Foo\lib\cmake\Foo\FooTargets.cmake shows:
set_target_properties(Nexidia.Workbench.StaticLib.StaticLib PROPERTIES
INTERFACE_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES "${_IMPORT_PREFIX}/Foo/include"
INTERFACE_LINK_DIRECTORIES "${_IMPORT_PREFIX}/Foo/lib"
INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES "\$<LINK_ONLY:\$<0:-Wl,--start-group>>;C:/full/path/to/libA.lib;C:/full/path/to/libB.lib \$<LINK_ONLY:\$<0:-Wl,--end-group>>"
)
(with the full paths to about 40 libraries).
PS. I'm reading Professional CMake: A Practical Guide, so if someone could cite the chapter/sub-section that answers this it might help.
This is because your library is static and so it cannot be correctly linked to consumers without including its dependencies on consumers' link lines. The same thing happens with the shared dependencies of shared libraries. Static dependencies of shared libraries are fully "absorbed" into the shared library and so they don't appear.
CMake is aware of all this, and so to respect the other semantics of PRIVATE, it inserts the $<LINK_ONLY:...> generator expression. This ensures that the libraries are used for linking only and that any associated INTERFACE_* properties are not propagated.
In other words, CMake is behaving correctly here.
You should resolve this by creating and linking to targets for libB and friends that you can either export as part of your main build or import into both your main build and via find_dependency in your distributed package, along with the libraries themselves, of course.
The best advice I can give you is to always link to targets in CMake, never to paths or raw library flags.
I am attempting to use LibUSB in a project. However whenever I attempt to use basic libUSB functions I get the following error:
...src/main/main.cpp.o: In function `main':
...src/main/main.cpp:10: undefined reference to `libusb_init'
...src/main/main.cpp:11: undefined reference to `libusb_set_debug'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
The package LibUSB-devel is installed (I'm on fedora 22) and my IDE KDevelop finds and recognises the headers, to the point it offers LibUSB code completions once you have added the import statement. I don't have any custom include lines in either my IDE or CMake (my build system) so I would like to know what I need to to to make CMake find the LibUSB headers.
This is the contents of main.cpp, just in case I messed something up:
#include <iostream>
#include <libusb-1.0/libusb.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
libusb_init(NULL);
libusb_set_debug(NULL, LIBUSB_LOG_LEVEL_WARNING);
/*snip*/
std::cout << "Hello, world! PTPID=" << std::endl;
return 0;
}
The following are the CMakeLists.txt:
../
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.11)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++11")
set(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE Debug)
project(aProjectThatHasHadIt'sNameObcured)
add_subdirectory(src)
.../src/cmakelists.txt just adds subdirectories
.../src/main/
add_executable(main main.cpp)
In general, to link a third party library, you need to add the include directory where the compiler will look for the headers, and the libraries which are used by the linker.
To add include directories use target_include_directories, to add a library to be linked to a target use target_link_libraries.
For libUSB and a testLibUSB.cpp source file this would result in
add_executable(targetTestLibUSB testLibUSB.cpp)
target_include_directories(targetTestLibUSB ${LIBUSB_INCLUDE_DIR})
target_link_libraries(targetTestLibUSB ${LIBUSB_LIBRARY})
If you have several targets, you might want to use include_directories and link_libraries before defining any target. These commands apply to all targets of a project after they are set and save a lot of repetition
You can specify the paths for LIBUSB_INCLUDE_DIR and LIBUSB_LIBRARY by hand. But more flexible and portable is to use CMake built-in mechanisms to find headers and libraries.
Header can be searched by find_path and libraries by find_library.
in your case this could be
find_path(LIBUSB_INCLUDE_DIR
NAMES libusb.h
PATH_SUFFIXES "include" "libusb" "libusb-1.0")
find_library(LIBUSB_LIBRARY
NAMES usb
PATH_SUFFIXES "lib" "lib32" "lib64")
The PATH_SUFFIXES are optional. If you have installed the library in a default location, CMake will find it automatically. Otherwise specify CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH and CMake will look for the headers and libraries there, too. You can specify the variable either by adding it in the CMake GUI or adding -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/add to your CMake call.
A common pitfall is to not delete the CMakeCache.txt file in the build directory. CMake caches the values for LIBUSB_INCLUDE_DIR and LIBUSB_LIBRARY and if you makes adjustment to the prefix path or your search logic, it still does not reevaluate the variable values but sticks to the cached values.
From your projects CMakeLists.txt file it doesn't become apparent to me how you've tried to link libusb. The way I would do is the following:
target_link_libraries(project_name <other_dependencies> usb-1.0)
(Just to clarify I mean the CMakeLIsts.txt file in which you add your executable)
You're trying to import from <libusb-1.0/...> thus you need to link usb-1.0 (the lib is always omitted from linker commands!)
I'm on Fedora 23, also using KDevelop and I didn't have to specify a path. Especially because on my system all the environment variables used in the previous answer are NULL anyways.
And to confirm where and how a library is installed in the future you can just do:
locate libusb | grep .so
Hope this was somewhat helpful.
I've looked around, and it doesn't seem that the solution to my problem has been discussed anywhere. So, I write here.
I create a CMake project for generation of several Python libraries. I use Boost.Python to wrap my C++ code, CMake to build dynamic libraries. Everything is on Cygwin platform. The topmost level of the project is pretty standard- eventually it leads to the source directory via:
ADD_SUBDIRECTORY("src")
The /src directory contains two sub-folders - mmath and ann - each is intended for its own library. The CMake file at this level is:
MESSAGE("Going into subdirectory mmath...")
ADD_SUBDIRECTORY("mmath")
MESSAGE("Going into subdirectory ann...")
ADD_SUBDIRECTORY("ann")
So we build the mmath library first:
file(GLOB MMATH_HEADERS ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/*.h)
file(GLOB MMATH_SRC ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/*.cpp ${MMATH_HEADERS})
SET( ext_libs
${Boost_LIBRARIES}
${PYTHON_LIBRARIES}/libpython2.6.dll
)
ADD_LIBRARY(mmath SHARED ${MMATH_SRC})
TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(mmath ${ext_libs})
and it works perfectly. The resulting dynamic library can then be imported in Python as a module (in cygwin the library is prepended with "cyg" prefix, instead of "lib"). Among other things, the library defines a class DATA, which is essentially a customized container (a collection of variables of standard types), so very simple.
Now, when CMake proceeds into the /src/ann directory, it tries to build the corresponding cygann.dll (cygwin convention) library, which depends on the mmath library we have built already. The CMake script is:
file(GLOB ANN_HEADERS ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/*.h)
file(GLOB ANN_SRC ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/*.cpp ${ANN_HEADERS})
SET( ext_libs1
mmath
${Boost_LIBRARIES}
${PYTHON_LIBRARIES}/libpython2.6.dll
)
ADD_LIBRARY(ann SHARED ${ANN_SRC})
TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(ann ${ext_libs1})
In the src/ann directory we have a file defining the class Ann, which has the members of type std::vector. It is here where linking problem revels itself: the DATA class causes some problems on the linking stage - the "undefined reference" error. The errors indicate that neither constructor nor destructor for the DATA class are defined:
CMakeFiles/ann.dir/libann.cpp.o: In function `Destroy<libmmath::DATA>':
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.8.3/include/c++/bits/stl_construct.h:93: undefined reference to `libmmath::DATA::~DATA()'
CMakeFiles/ann.dir/libann.cpp.o: In function `Construct<libmmath::DATA, libmmath::DATA>':
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.8.3/include/c++/bits/stl_construct.h:83: undefined reference to `libmmath::DATA::DATA(libmmath::DATA const&)'
So I'm wondering what could be the problem. Is this related to CMake features, cygwin tricks or is it something regarding the code itself? Well, i feel that the problem is less likely related to the code itself, since it works in standard utilization (static exe or just a single dynamic library). It is more likely that it is something about CMake or cygwin that I'm missing. But what? Please, help. Thank you in advance.
My project is quite simple but I like to keep files in different folders for clarity. For instance I have three folders.
An Output folder that contains all the classes used for the output. (for now only Output.cc and Output.h).
A Math folder, containing all of the classes related to math. (vector.cc, vector.h, randomgen.h, randomgen.cc, etc)
A Tests folder where there are different cpp files each containing a main function. (Output_test.cc, vector_test.cc, etc)
How can I create a CMake script that complies all of the different main function of the different test programs using the classes that are in different folders?
In addition, I didn't see where the compiler, and its options, are specified in a CMake file.
How to specify the compiler?
There are a few ways to specify the compiler you want to use. Settings environment variables, defining compiler variables, or designating a generator.
Settings Environment Variables
There are two ways to use environment variables to help CMake determine which compiler to use during a CMake configuration. Using the PATH variable or the CC and CXX variables.
PATH
Make sure the path to your desired compiler is first in the list. If you don't want to modify your path, then use the 2nd option.
CC & CXX
CMake reads the variables CC and CXX to determine the path for the C compiler and C++ compiler respectively. Note that the first time CMake is configured for a project it will cache these paths, and look to the cache first for all future configurations. So if you wish to change the compiler path, be sure to delete the cache file CMakeCache.txt. As HughB pointed out, there is a good example of this given by Guillaume
Defining Compiler Variables
Similar to using CC and CXX, there are CMake variables that can be defined at the commandline to choose the desired compiler. They are CMAKE_C_COMPILER and CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER. You can set them using the -D option and they use the same values as CC and CXX. Note, just like CC and CXX these are cached after the first CMake configuration.
Example
cmake -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/bin/g++4.6/g++ -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/usr/bin/gcc4.6/gcc <path to src>
Designating a Generator
The last way to choose the compiler is by using the -G option to select a generator. There are numerous generators to choose and I recently answered a question about them. I'm not going to go into too much detail about them in this answer, but you can read my other answer for more details.
Example
cmake -G "Unix Makefile" <path to src>
Don't Hardcode the Compiler
I recommend resisting the urge to "hardcode" the compiler in the CMakeLists.txt files. CMake is meant to be compiler independent and you should be setting the compiler information external of the CMake files. Use one of the methods mentioned above to keep your CMake files portable and to avoid confusion if yourself or someone else wants to build the project with a different compiler.
Related references. (Disclaimer: Written by me)
What is a CMake generator
Understanding the Purpose Behind CMake
How to Compile Multiple Executables?
As HughB mentioned use add_executables. You could also create separate libraries for each folder group, there are many ways to organize your project. I'm going to keep it simple and give an example that builds two executables in the same project.
For this example I created 5 files:
include/Helloworld.h
#include <stdio.h>
src/HelloWorld.cpp
#include "HelloWorld.h"
int main()
{
printf("Hello World!\n");
return 0;
}
include/HelloWorld2.h
#include <stdio.h>
src/HelloWorld2.cpp
#include "HelloWorld2.h"
int main()
{
printf("Hello World2!\n");
return 0;
}
CMakeLists.txt
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0)
# This is required to compile and must contain the paths to
# all of the header files
include_directories(include)
# These are optional, but are added to be passed to the
# add_executable command so that the headers are accessible
# from within the project
set(HW_INCLUDES include/HelloWorld.h)
set(HW_INCLUDES2 include/HelloWorld2.h)
project(HelloWorlds)
# Required sources
set(HW_SOURCES src/HelloWorld.cpp)
set(HW_SOURCES2 src/HelloWorld2.cpp)
add_executable(HelloWorld ${HW_SOURCES} ${HW_INCLUDES})
add_executable(HelloWorld2 ${HW_SOURCES2} ${HW_INCLUDES2})
When this project is built there will be two executables: HelloWorld.exe and HelloWorld2.exe.
Consider putting the code that will be used in different program mains in a library. Use the add_library command to do make a library. You could have a directory hierarchy like this:
TopDir
CMakeLists.txt
MyLib
CMakeLists.txt
vector.cc
vector.h
....
MyExe1
CMakeLists.txt
main1.cc
MyExe2
CMakeLists.txt
main2.cc
Use add_subdirectory in your top level cmakelists.txt to traverse the directories. In the dirs that build executables, use add_executable and target_link_libraries. If you named the library MyLib then your target_link_libraries command would look like
target_link_libraries( exe1 MyLib )
In regard to overriding the compiler, see how to specify new gcc path for cmake