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.
Related
I'm trying to get cmake (on linux) to create some static object (.o) files and install them to an external directory. To that end I have a list, object_sources, containing the project path of the sources, and put this in the top level CMakeLists.txt:
set(local_objects "")
foreach(file ${object_sources})
get_filename_component(cur ${file} NAME_WE)
add_library("${cur}.o" OBJECT ${file})
list(APPEND local_objects "${cur}.o")
# To confirm these variables are what I think they are:
message("---> ${cur} | ${file}")
endforeach()
install(
# Also tried FILES, see below.
TARGETS ${local_objects}
CONFIGURATIONS Debug
# Also tried nothing instead of 'OBJECTS' (same outcome)
# and LIBRARY (cmake fails on error).
OBJECTS
DESTINATION "/some/external/dir"
)
With regard to using FILES, it cannot work because in fact a foo.o is never created, so there is no point in me trying to get the correct project path.
When I get to the actual make command in the cmake build directory, it spits out Built target foo.o, etc., during the process. However, as mentioned, no foo.o is ever created anywhere, and the install creates an objects-Debug directory in /some/external/dir containing directories for each target using its name (e.g., foo.o/) and inside that some more nested directories at the bottom of which is the object I want, with the wrong name: foo.cpp.o.
Cmake can structure its build tree however it wants and name its temporaries whatever it likes, but I would really like to be able to ask for a final product object foo.o (not foo.cpp.o) and have it installed that way.
Is that possible? I'm beginning to think this is all very contrary to the (implicit) purposes of cmake, and that I should keep these kinds of tasks separate in a shell script or makefile (it takes about three lines in either), and just use cmake for the normative libs and executables.
Or: I believe I could get this to work if I created each object as a static archive (lib.a) instead, but part of the issue here is that would require modifying the build scripts of something else, or else extracting them via a script (in which case I might as well do the whole thing in the script).
I'm not aware of a good way to do this in CMake, but maybe the least fussy would be to use an OBJECT library. This would allow you to get the object files for a target using generator expressions, more specifically the TARGET_OBJECTS expression. This is a minimal example with a single foo.c file containing an empty main:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.11)
project(foo C)
set(SOURCES foo.c)
add_library(foo_obj OBJECT ${SOURCES})
add_executable(foo $<TARGET_OBJECTS:foo_obj>)
set(OBJS $<TARGET_OBJECTS:foo_obj>)
message(STATUS "these are my objects: ${OBJS}") # generator expression printed here, not evaluated yet
add_custom_target(print_foo_objs
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E echo $<TARGET_OBJECTS:foo_obj>)
set(OBJ_ROOT_DIR $<TARGET_PROPERTY:foo,BINARY_DIR>)
add_custom_target(copy_foo_objs
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E make_directory ${OBJ_ROOT_DIR}/myobjects/
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy_if_different $<TARGET_OBJECTS:foo_obj> ${OBJ_ROOT_DIR}/myobjects/
COMMAND_EXPAND_LISTS) # UPDATE
Please note that as a generator expression, you will not have access to it during configuration (hence, that message will contain the generator expression as it was textually declared), but only during the generation phase.
If you still need to rename the object files (i.e. from foo.c.o to foo.o) you can maybe call a custom external script to do that for you.
Moreover, there might be issues with cleanup, etc. which will force you to add more custom targets and/or commands (and associated dependencies) to deal with it. Another downside of this approach.
UPDATE: COMMAND_EXPAND_LISTS allows the expansion of lists in the generator expression and it was added in CMake 3.8 and later (see here).
I am trying to add a custom target with CMake that executes one command for each given .cpp file. The command should only be re-executed when the source file itself or one of the included source files changes. AFAIK to achieve this I need a list of all the included files and add them to the DEPENDS option of the add_custom_command() calls that belong to my custom target.
So is there a built-in way to get that list of included files?
I know about the IMPLICIT_DEPENDS option of the add_custom_command() function but it only works for Makefile generators. I would like to make this work for all generators.
Thank you for your time
Edit:
As requested I will post some cmake code to show what I want to achieve.
I want to add a custom target, that runs clang-tidy on all the given .cpp files. When incrementally building the custom target the clang-tidy commands should be re-run whenever a .cpp file or one of its directly or indirectly included header files is changed. Just like re-runs of the compiler are handled.
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# mainTargetName The name of the target that shall be analyzed
# files A list of all the main targets .cpp files
#
function( addStaticAnalysisTarget mainTargetName files )
set(targetName runStaticAnalysis_${mainTargetName})
set(command "clang-tidy-4.0 -checks=* -p ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}")
foreach( file ${files} )
get_filename_component( baseName ${file} NAME_WE)
set(stampFile ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/analyze_${baseName}.stamp )
set(fullFile ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/${file})
set(commandWithFile "${command} ${fullFile}")
separate_arguments_for_platform( commandList ${commandWithFile})
add_custom_command(
OUTPUT ${stampFile}
DEPENDS "${fullFile}"
IMPLICIT_DEPENDS CXX "${fullFile}"
COMMAND ${commandList}
COMMAND cmake -E touch "${stampFile}" # without creating a file as a touch-stone the command will always be re-run.
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CPPCODEBASE_ROOT_DIR}
COMMENT "${commandWithFile}"
VERBATIM
)
list(APPEND stampFiles ${stampFile})
endforeach()
set_source_files_properties(${stampFiles} PROPERTIES GENERATED TRUE) # make the stamp files known to cmake as generated files.
add_custom_target(
${targetName}
DEPENDS ${stampFiles}
)
endfunction()
The problem with that is, that it does not seem to work. When I change included files clang-tidy is not re-run for the affected files.
I used the "Unix Makefile" generator for this example so it should work at least with make. Any hints why it doesn't?
My hopes where that I could achieve the desired behavior for all generators by somehow getting the file-dependencies at cmake time and then adding them to the ''''DEPENDS'''' list. But the dependency scanning must be done each time the command is run, so it can not be done at cmake time. This means that the scanning must be implemented by cmake which it currently is not.
A guy with similar problems:
https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/issues/16830
Edit 2:
I think the problem that the IMPLICIT_DEPENDS option was not working was because I did not use correct filenames. I changed that in the code snipped, but I have not yet tested if it works in the project.
I think the answer to my question is ...
No, you can not use cmakes dependency scanner in the cmake code.
That makes sense, because this problem can not be solved at cmake time, because the dependencies of a .cpp file may change without cmake being re-run.
The problem must be solved within cmake itself at make time. This is done when using the IMPLICIT_DEPENDS option.
Also, I tried to solve a Problem that I did not really have, because at this point I can only run clang-tidy on linux anyways. However, clang-tidy may become available on windows as well and then I may have the problem again.
To sum the comments up:
Tambre stated that CMake is not a compiler and therefore can not do that.
I think this is wrong. According to this article, CMake can parse cpp include dependencies because make has no such dependency searcher itself. That was news to me, but I mostly live on Windows so I am not that familiar with make. It could also be possible that in the meantime make was extended to do its own dependency searching. Also this explains why the IMPLICIT_DEPENDS option is only available for make.
Florian pointed out that it is not necessary to create an own custom target for running clang-tidy. Instead, one can use the CXX_CLANG_TIDY target property to run clang-tidy for each file after compiling it. This means however, that static-analysis can not be separated from the build which could lead to inacceptable buildtimes.
There is the cmake -E cmake_depends command line, that could be used to retrieve dependencies at cmake time. But as stated above, I erroneously thought that I needed the dependencies at cmake time, while I needed them at runtime.
The IMPLICIT_DEPENDS options did not work because I had an error in my cmake code.
I have a c++ cmake project. In this project I build (among other) one example, where I need to use another project, call it Foo. This Foo project does not offer a cmake build system. Instead, it has a pre-made Makefile.custom.in. In order to build an executable that uses Foo's features, one needs to copy this makefile in his project, and modify it (typically setting the SOURCES variable and a few compiler flags). Basically, this Makefile ends up having the sources for your executable and also all the source files for the Foo project. You will not end up using Foo as a library.
Now, this is a design I don't like, but for the sake of the question, let's say we stick with it.
To create my example inside my cmake build I added a custom target:
CONFIGURE_FILE( ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/Makefile.custom.in Makefile.custom)
ADD_CUSTOM_TARGET(my_target COMMAND $(MAKE) -f Makefile.custom
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR})
This works. I can specify some variables to cmake, which get resolved in the call to CONFIGURE_FILE, and I end up with a working Makefile.custom. Then, invoking make my_target from the build directory, I can build the executable. I can even add it to the all target (to save me the effort of typing make my_target) with
SET_TARGET_PROPERTIES(my_target PROPERTIES EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL FALSE)
Sweet. However, cmake appears to assign a single job to the custom target, slowing down my compilation time (the Foo source folder contains a couple dozens cpp files). On top of that, the make clean target does not forward to the custom makefile. I end up having to add another target:
ADD_CUSTOM_TARGET(really-clean COMMAND "$(MAKE)" clean
COMMAND "$(MAKE)" -f Makefile.custom clean
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR})
which, unlike my_target with all, I can't include in the clean target (can I?).
Now, I know that a cleaner solution would be to have the Foo project be built as an external project, and then link to it. However, I've been 'recommended' to use their Makefile.custom.in makefile, modifying the few lines I need (adding my sources, specifying compiler flags, and few other minor modifications). So, regardless of how neat and clean this design pattern is, my questions are:
is there a way to tell cmake that make should use more than 1 job when making the target my_target?
is there a cleaner way to include a pre-existing makefile in a cmake project? Note that I don't want (can't?) use Foo as a library (and link against it). I want (need?) to compile it together with my executable using a makefile not generated by cmake (well, cmake can help a bit, through CONFIGURE_FILE, by resolving some variables, but that's it).
Note: I am aware of ExternalProject (as suggested also in this answer), but I think it's not exactly what I need here (since it would build Foo and then use it as a library). Also, both my project and Foo are written exclusively in C++ (not sure this matter at all).
I hope the question makes sense (regardless of how ugly/annoying/unsatisfactory the resulting design would be).
Edit: I am using cmake version 3.5.2
First, since you define your own target, you can assign more cores to the build process for the target my_target, directly inside your CMakeLists.txt.
You can include the Cmake module ProcessCount to determine the number of cores in your machine and then use this for a parallel build.
include(ProcessorCount)
ProcessorCount(N)
if(NOT N EQUAL 0)
# given that cores != 0 you could modify
# math(EXPR N "${N}+1") # modify (increment/decrement) N at your will, in this case, just incrementing N by one
set(JOBS_IN_PARALLEL -j${N})
endif(NOT N EQUAL 0)
and when you define your custom target have something like the following:
ADD_CUSTOM_TARGET(my_target
COMMAND ${CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM} ${JOBS_IN_PARALLEL} -f Makefile.custom
WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR})
by the way, I don't think there's the need for you to include also CMAKE_BUILD_TOOL among the COMMANDs in your target.
I believe that instead of modifying the lines as above, you could call
make -j8 my_target
and it might start 8 jobs (just an example) without modifying the CMakeLists.txt, but I cannot guarantee this works having defined the COMMAND the way you have, just try if that's enough.
For the second point, I cannot think right now of a "cleaner" way.
I recently switch from Autotools to CMake because CMake seems to be better for cross platform development and what I've noticed is when I build a static library of my C++ code all the files inside have a suffix .cpp.o
ar -t PA8/libgenericTZR.a
genericTZR.cpp.o
I've looked at other libraries built by other tools and they don't do that. I'm not sure if this is really a bad thing but, how can I get CMake to build the static libraries without the .cpp added file extension?
This is my CMake File
add_executable(PA8 ISP_Charges.cpp genericTZR.cpp genericTZR.h)
set(LIBSRC genericTZR.c genericTZR.h)
add_library(genericTZR SHARED ${LIBSRC})
add_library(genericTZR SHARED $<TARGET_OBJECTS:myObjects>)
add_library(genericTZR-static STATIC ${LIBSRC})
set_target_properties(genericTZR-static PROPERTIES OUTPUT_NAME $
install (TARGETS PA8 DESTINATION bin)
install (TARGETS genericTZR genericTZR-static DESTINATION lib)
install (FILES "${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/PA8/genericTZR.h" DESTINA$
Thanks
According to this thread on cmake list (and I agree with it), it is not a good idea to try to change the output file names.
Consider the example gave in the link:
add_executable(foo foo.c foo.cpp)
Generated objects would be foo.c.o and foo.cpp.o. They would conflict if you forced them to have just the .o extension.
You can try to use the non-documented, internal, might-change-in-the-future
set(CMAKE_C_OUTPUT_EXTENSION_REPLACE 1)
set(CMAKE_CXX_OUTPUT_EXTENSION_REPLACE 1)
I don't know if they're still available or if works at all. I've never used them.
As comments on your post have clarified it, the names inside the static lib aren't really used, you shouldn't worry about them.
I'm writing my first configure.ac and need to search for a C++ library.
I tried the following line, but when run the configure script, it finds nothing.
AC_SEARCH_LIBS([xmlpp::Document::get_root_node], [xml++-2.6])
Probably something is wrong with it. So, how can I make autoconf look for C++ libraries? I don't want to supply a global method (and don't think libxml++ has one either).
You might want to try AX_CXX_CHECK_LIB from the Autoconf macro archive. you should probably make sure that you either use AC_LANG([C++]) or surround the call with AC_LANG_PUSH([C++]) and AC_LANG_POP([C++]).
This link is about finding a C-style signature function to the library so that it can be tested by autoconf or write your own test:
https://nerdland.net/2009/07/detecting-c-libraries-with-autotools/
Maybe worth to try, but I am getting an error with the AC_LANG_PROGRAM macro. The problem is put -llibname before the foo.cpp file. My compiler cares about the order of the -l and cpp file. The linker will not be able to find the function in the library.
Hope this helps. My suggestion would be to use CMake instead of Autoconf.
This CMakeLists.txt file should get you started:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)
# http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#module:FindLibXml2
find_package(libxml2 2.6 REQUIRED) # http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#command:find_package
include_directories(${LIBXML2_INCLUDE_DIR}) # http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#command:include_directories
add_executable(myApp main.cpp other.cpp) # http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#command:add_executable
target_link_libraries(myApp ${LIBXML2_LIBRARIES}) # http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#command:target_link_libraries
To use the file, after adjusting for your project of course. Put it in your Source dir as CMakeLists.txt, then:
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. # This is like autoconf and generates the make files
make
If it sounds intriguing check out the giant youtube vid on all the benefits: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ut9o4OdSC0
It's good to use CMake, CTest, CDash, and CPack together in a project.