Cmake recompiles everything each time I add a new source subfolder - c++

I have a project tree organized as the following:
MyProjects/ - build - project1 - CMakeLists.txt
| | project2 - CMakeLists.txt
|
| src - project1 - Project1Class1.h
| Project1Class1.cpp
| Project1Class2.h
| Project1Class2.cpp
| more subdirectories ...
project2 - Project2Class1.h
| Project2Class1.cpp
| more subdirectories ...
Imagine that project2 depends on project1. Then project2 uses directly project1 files and does not use a static or dynamic project1 library.
Then project2/CMakeLists.txt finds out the project1 and project2 source files and includes them through a GLOB_RECURSE :
file(
GLOB_RECURSE
source_files
../../project1/
../../project2/
)
This is working in the sense that it correctly builds my projects.
Each time I add a new source file in a new folder, in e.g. file MyNewFolder/myTest.cpp in src/project2/, and type
~/MyProjects/build/project2/$ cmake .
~/MyProjects/build/project2/$ make
Then the file is correctly taken into account by cmake. However, my problem is that every file is recompiled again.
Same thing when I change a source file in project1 and try to compile project2.
Note that I considerably simplified what really is in my CMakeLists.txt. So my question is: based on what I explained about it, is this behavior what CMake is expected to do? And if yes what is the rationale behind it and what should I do for make to only compile the new file? I was not able to find any documentation about it on the internet.
Note: Feel free to discuss the overall source build files organization. Notice that I wanted to keep my build configuration separated from the src/ folder.
Edit: I found this which explains why GLOB and GLOB_RECURSE prevent it to work.
Edit 2: Even with no GLOB, the compilation is done from the begining is other cases (see this question)

You are observing known side effect of file(GLOB_RECURSE ...). I'm not sure why exactly this is happening, but to avoid this most CMake-based projects lists their sources explicitly:
set(source_files
../../project1/Project1Class1.cpp
../../project1/Project1Class2.cpp
...
../../project2/Project2Class1.cpp
../../project2/Project2Class1.cpp
...
)

Related

CMake target_include_directories does not affect header files

My project is roughly structured like this:
├CMakeLists.txt
|
├───ExampleApp
| ├───CMakeLists.txt
| ├───header.hpp
| └───main.cpp
|
└───ExampleLibrary
├───CMakeLists.txt
├───mylib.hpp
└───mylib.cpp
In the root CMakeLists.txt I call
add_subdirectory(ExampleLibrary)
add_subdirectory(ExampleApp)
To build the library I call:
add_library(ExampleLibrary
mylib.hpp mylib.cpp
)
And finally, in the executable, I try to do:
add_executable(ExampleApp
header.hpp main.cpp
)
target_include_directories(ExampleApp
PRIVATE ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/ExampleLibrary
)
target_link_libraries(ExampleApp
Path/To/The/Binary/Directory
)
Now the build files generate just fine, and the project also builds with no errors. However, when I now try to include mylib.hpp in header.hpp, I get build errors because it can't find the file mylib.hpp. But I actually can include mylib.hpp in main.cpp and the project builds and compiles.
Am I missing something? I thought target_include_directories() works for both .cpp and .hpp files.
It seems like you may not have added the correct directory as an include directory for the ExampleApp. The PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR variable evaluates to the directory in which the last project() call was made in your CMake project. You have not shown where this is, but you could use the root directory of the CMake project to be sure it is correct; try using ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/ExampleLibrary in the target_include_directories call instead:
target_include_directories(ExampleApp
PRIVATE ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/ExampleLibrary
)
A couple more notes:
If you aren't using an IDE such as Visual Studio for compilation, there is no need to add header files to calls like add_library() and add_executable(). Doing this only ensures they are shown in an IDE.
Instead, specify directories within which the headers can be found, using target_include_directories(). In your case, it sounds like you should have both directories listed here.
To link the ExampleLibrary target to the executable, you can simply use the target name in target_link_libraries(). There is no need to list out the binary directory (unless you are linking other libraries from there).
So with this in mind, the ExampleApp CMake file could look something like this:
add_executable(ExampleApp
main.cpp
)
target_include_directories(ExampleApp PRIVATE
${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/ExampleLibrary
${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}
)
target_link_libraries(ExampleApp PRIVATE
ExampleLibrary
)

How to set up sub directory includes in CMake/CLion?

This is similar to Including directories in Clion, but after following the accepted answer there I made no progress.
I'm trying to edit a large OSS project in CLion. It does not use CMake, so CLion has generated a CMakeLists.txt file. When I open a source file, it is unable to resolve includes that use sub directories:
The file this screenshot is from is in the same "opto" subdirectory it is importing from. If I change the imports to not include "opto" it works fine, but I can't do that, since this is a major project and I'm just wanting to write a small patch:
$ find . -type f | wc -l
10532
I've added the file I'm importing directly to add_executable as suggested in the other answer:
# CMakeLists.txt
add_executable(hotspot
[lots of other files]
src/share/vm/opto/compile.hpp
)
And I've added the opto directory to include_directories as outlined in the second answer to the other question:
# CMakeLists.txt
include_directories(
src
src/share/vm/opto)
Neither is helping CLion resolve imports via the opto subdirectory.
What am I missing?
Using include_directories() must do, but you have to mention each sub_directory separately. Below i have included two directories in the same way where one of it is sub_directory.
The Header files have successfully been detected by CLion.

How to keep source folders hierarchy on solution explorer?

I made a C++ project on Linux, and I grouped source files in many directories to organize myself.
I was using CMake to compile, with one CMakeFiles.txt on each subdirectory.
srcs
|--folderA
| |--Toto.cpp
| |--Tata.cpp
|
|--folderB
| |--Foo.cpp
| |--Bar.cpp
[...]
Recently, I opened it with Visual Studio 2015, which found every source file, but just put the entire list on the "Source Files" folder of solution explorer.
Source Files
|--Toto.cpp
|--Tata.cpp
|--Foo.cpp
|--Bar.cpp
I plan to have a huge number of files, and it shall be soon difficult to find one.
Is there any way to explicitly tell it to respect the folder hierarchy on solution explorer?
Use the source_group command.
source_group(<name> [FILES <src>...] [REGULAR_EXPRESSION <regex>])
Defines a group into which sources will be placed in project files. This is intended to set up file tabs in Visual Studio. The options are:
FILES
Any source file specified explicitly will be placed in group . Relative paths are interpreted with respect to the current source directory.
REGULAR_EXPRESSION
Any source file whose name matches the regular expression will be placed in group .
#James Adkison is correct; source_group is what you want to use. As of CMake 3.8, the improved source_group command now offers a TREE argument to recursively search your source hierarchy to create source groups to match it. Here is a basic solution for the example you provided:
project(MyProj)
set(MyProj_SOURCES
"folderA/Toto.cpp"
"folderA/Tata.cpp"
"folderB/Foo.cpp"
"folderB/Bar.cpp"
)
add_executable(Main ${MyProj_SOURCES})
# Create the source groups for source tree with root at CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR.
source_group(TREE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} FILES ${MyProj_SOURCES})

Modular C++ Project Build with CMake

I'm trying to find a way to build a big modular C++ project with CMake.
The structure of the project is the following:
--project_root
--src
--folder_1
--source_1.h
--source_1.cc
--test_source_1.cc // file containing a main with unit tests
--folder_2
--source_2.h
--source_2.cc
--test_source_2.cc // file containing a main with unit tests
--folder_3
...
And so on.
Each folder represent a project module and each module might depend on other modules, so for example source_1.h may include source_2.h.
Every module folder may also contains a test file so the whole project will have multiple executables.
How can I build the whole project with CMake? How should I write my CMakeLists.txt file?
Thank you a lot.
There are many, many examples out there of how to structure CMake projects for C++, many of which are referenced by the tutorial #user2485710 suggested in his comment, so I'm not going to go super in-depth here, but I'll at least give you a good starting point based on the way you want to lay out you folder structure.
The nice thing about CMake is that it can essentially do a tree-decent using the add_subdirectory command. This lets us easily divide up our CMake code to only do what is required at any specific directory level. In otherwords, each CMakeLists.txt file should only do the minimal amount of work needed to properly set up things at the current depth in the directory tree. In you example, your CMake tree might look like this:
--project_root
--src
--CMakeLists.txt
--folder_1
--CMakeLists.txt
--source_1.h
--source_1.cc
--test_source_1.cc // file containing a main with unit tests
--folder_2
--CMakeLists.txt
--source_2.h
--source_2.cc
--test_source_2.cc // file containing a main with unit tests
...
In src/CMakeLists.txt you do all of your project-level initialization, I.E. find_package, setting up your include-path, etc. Then you simply add the following at the end:
add_subdirectory(folder_1)
add_subdirectory(folder_2)
...
This tells CMake that it should look in those folders for additional stuff to do. Now in src/folder_1/CMakeLists.txt, we do the actual work of whatever combination of add_executable and add_library you need to properly build source_1.cc and test_source_1.cc, and likewise in src/folder_2/CMakeLists.txt for source_2.cc, etc.
The other nice thing is that any CMake variables you set higher up the tree are propagated down through add_subdirectory. So, for example, in src/CMakeLists.txt you can check for some sort of 'build unit-test' flag and set the CMake variable there, and then all you have to do in the other CMakeLists.txt files is check for that variable. This can also be super useful to do if you have a project where CMake is dynamically generating header files for you based on checking environment variables for path-names and the like.
If the structure of the project is well-regulated, you could write custom macros or function of cmake to define the modules and their dependencies.
The cmake scripts in OpenCV project is a good reference:
/libs/opencv-2.4.8/sources/
|+cmake/
|+doc/
|~modules/
| |+core/
| | |+doc/
| | |+include/
| | |+perf/
| | |+src/
| | |+test/
| | `-CMakeLists.txt
| |~imgproc/
| | |+doc/
| | |+include/
| | |+perf/
| | |+src/
| | |+test/
| | `-CMakeLists.txt
| |+ml/
| |+...
| |-CMakeLists.txt
|-CMakeLists.txt
root/modules/imgproc/CMakeLists.txt
set(the_description "Image Processing")
ocv_define_module(imgproc opencv_core)
You will need a CMakeLists.txt in each folder where building will occur.
project() is used to set the name of your overall project.
add_subdirectory() is used to command the configuration to process the CMakeLists.txt in that directory.
add_executable() is used to create an executable from included sources.
add_library() is used to create a static or dynamic library that can be added to executables or libraries as a dependency.
Using a build script (.bat, .cmd, or .sh) will allow you to automate some of the cmake process, such as setting up an out-of-source configuration or build.
You should look up the documentation for these commands on the cmake website, https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/

How can I build a C++ project with multiple interdependent subdirectories?

I have a C++ project where I've used directories as more of an organizational element -- the way one might use packages in Java or directories in PHP. Directories are not intended to be self-sufficient elements, but rather just a way of organizing the whole of the project and keeping me from being overwhelmed by sources. How can I construct my CMakeLists.txt files to deal with this? Making the directories libraries doesn't seem to fit here, since they are all interdependent and not intended to be used that way.
As a related issue, most of the examples I've seen of multiple subdirectories in CMake (and there aren't very many of those) have ignored or glossed over the issue of setting include_directories, which is something I've been having trouble with. Short of combing my source files to determine which file depends on which and in what directory, is there anyway to just set all directories under /src/ as potential include directories and let CMake work out which ones are actually dependent?
Here's an example structure:
--src
--top1
--mid1
--bot1
--src1.cpp
--hdr1.h
--bot2
--src2.cpp
--hdr2.h
--mid2
--bot3
--src3.cpp
--src4.cpp
--hdr3.h
--top2
--mid3
--src5.cpp
--hdr4.h
So on and so forth. How can I structure my CMakeLists.txt files to handle this sort of structure?
Since the directory structure in your project is just there to keep your files organized, one approach is to have a CMakeLists.txt that automatically finds all sources files in the src directory and also adds all directories as include directories that have a header file in them. The following CMake file may serve as a starting point:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.12)
project (Foo)
file (GLOB_RECURSE Foo_SOURCES CONFIGURE_DEPENDS "src/*.cpp")
file (GLOB_RECURSE Foo_HEADERS CONFIGURE_DEPENDS "src/*.h")
set (Foo_INCLUDE_DIRS "")
foreach (_headerFile ${Foo_HEADERS})
get_filename_component(_dir ${_headerFile} PATH)
list (APPEND Foo_INCLUDE_DIRS ${_dir})
endforeach()
list (REMOVE_DUPLICATES Foo_INCLUDE_DIRS)
add_executable(FooExe ${Foo_SOURCES})
target_include_directories(FooExe PRIVATE ${Foo_INCLUDE_DIRS})
The two file(GLOB_RECURSE ... commands determine the set of source and header files. The foreach loop computes the set of include directories from the list of all header files. The CONFIGURE_DEPENDS flags tells CMake to re-run the glob command at build time.
One drawback with computing the set of source files is that CMake will not automatically detect when new files are added to your source tree. You manually have to re-create your build files then.
Though #sakra gave a good answer to this question, I believe it is more proper to approach it more in depth.
We want to separate our code into modules and libraries for many reasons. Like code encapsulation, re usability, easier debugging etc. This idea would propagate in compiling process too.
In other word, we want to divide the compilation process into little compilation steps, each belong to one module. So every module must have its own compilation procedure. This is why we use one CMakeLists.txt file per directory. Hence every directory would have its own compilation commands and there would be one master CMakeLists.txt file in the root directory of your project.
Here is an example. Consider the following structure of a project:
src/
|
- main.cpp
|
_sum/
|
- sum.h
|
- sum.cpp
We would have one CmakeLists.txt Per directory. First directory is the root directory of the project which src/ folder is in it. here is content for that file:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.4)
project(multi_file)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-Wall")
add_subdirectory(src)
Next CMakeLists.txt would located in src/ directory:
add_subdirectory("sum")
add_executable(out main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(out sum)
And the last one will be in the sum/ directory:
add_library(sum SHARED sum.cpp)
I hope this helps. I created a github repository in case you feel you need to see the code or you need further explanation.
I'm not an expert on CMake but since there are no other answers I'll take a look at the documentaton and give it a go. Organizing source and include files in different directories is pretty much the norm.
It looks like CMake allows you to give a list of include directories:
http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#command:include_directories
So something like:
include_directories("src/top1/mid1/bot1" "src/top1/mid1/bot2/" ... )
These are passed to the compiler so it can find the header files and will be passed for each of the source files. So any of your source files should be able to include any of the header files (which I think is what you're asking for).
Similar to that you should be able to list all your source files in the add_executable command:
add_executable(name "src/top1/mid1/bot1/src1.cpp" "src/top1/id1/bot2/src2.cpp" ...)
So this would be a naive way of getting everything to build. Each source file will be compiled and will look for headers in all those directories and then the object files will get linked together. Consider if there is any way of simplifying this such that you don't need so many include folders, maybe there are only a few common header files that need to be referenced by all source files. If things get more complex you can buiild sub-hierarchies into libraries etc. Also consider seperating source files and headers (e.g. in src and include).