CMAKE INSTALL PREFIX HOW TO
CMAKE INSTALL PREFIX DOWNLOAD
CMAKE INSTALL PREFIX WINDOWS

Once included this module exposes the following variables (plus a few more): CMAKE_INSTALL_BINDIR # bin/

CMAKE INSTALL PREFIX WINDOWS

on Windows the DLLs will go into bin/ rather than lib/, as expected. Despite the name, the module handles the layout in a cross-platform way, e.g. This standard layout is provided by the GNUInstallDirs module. Instead only the relative layout below the root install directory is preserved – this is sufficient to relyably use the package. The specified paths are relative to a root install directory, which makes the installation relocateable – the user isn’t forced to install the package to /usr/, /usr/local, /opt/, or any other path one might think to hardcode. Īnd this is exactly the layout I’m going for. Anyone vaguely familiar with Linux would expect the following. Unless a project has some specific requirements regarding this layout, there is a standard approach that can be used. This is the bare minimum, one might also want to consider any possibly generated documentation, scripts, etc. Where the static and shared libraries, executables, and headers go. One of the first things to consider when preparing for project installation is the install directory layout. It’s a basic, but more or less standard setup that could be extended to accomodate specific project’s needs. The approach I’m about to describe provides support for relocateable installs, that are find_package‘able via generated Config files. I wouldn’t be able to cover this topic well here, so I’d rather postpone it to a future, dedicated post.

CMAKE INSTALL PREFIX HOW TO

Unfortunately for the same reasons I also do not consider how to handle shared libraries.

I have no idea about Apple platforms, sorry not sorry. Instead of discussing all the possibilities I will present and describe an approach that supports a decent number of use cases on Linux as well as on Windows. The number of variables to consider is simply too large, especially for an introductory post. I first need to mention that deploying libraries, especially if multiplatform support is it be considered, is a huge topic that could be approached in many different ways. Let’s forget about Config files and find_package for a moment and see how to add the most basic installation support. Find modules and Config files can be consumed with the help of the find_package command – it will find the Find module or Config file associated with the given package and process them, thus making targets they define available.

Both of these are a standard way of exposing targets that encapsulate all the necessary information to the user. In CMake all this is handled by Find modules, or the more recent Config files.

CMAKE INSTALL PREFIX DOWNLOAD

However, it’s not quite sufficient for binaries – it could be used to download the package, but what then? We still need the information about include and link paths, possibly defines, flags and transitive dependencies. It’s a great solution for including dependencies that need to be built alongside the project. In part 6 I introduced the FetchContent module. In the context of CMake this would mean supporting the standard ways of incorporating dependencies into a project. This may be somewhat vague, but the key point, I believe, is the convenience. “Deployment of the binaries, be it static or shared, and possibly header files – for development purposes, to a directory of user’s choosing, in a way that exposes the binaries, headers and potential information about transitive dependencies, for convenient consumption by depending projects.” In the latter case, it will always be a shared library.Ī practical definition for “installing a library” could then be something along the lines of In the former case, the library could be either static or shared. It could be a development (build) dependency, or it could be runtime dependency. A library will generally be a dependency of another project – either a larger library or an application. What does it mean to “install” a library? Let’s first consider how a library is used. In this part of the series, we take a closer look at installing libraries.

No matter if you’re working on a library or an executable application, users need to be able to deploy the binaries to a location of their choosing in a reliable way. The next step is providing support for deploying, or installing, the built binaries to our users. In the previous part of the series, we looked at how to add tests to a project.

Cmake install prefix