Each command has the form COMMAND (args…) where COMMAND is the name of the command, and args is a white-space separated list of arguments. Each CMakeLists.txt consists of one or more commands. The build process is controlled by creating one or more CMakeLists.txt files in each directory (including subdirectories) that make up a project. Because CMake is open source, and has a simple, extensible design, CMake can be extended as necessary to support new features. CMake can also handle situations where executables must be built in order to generate code that is then compiled and linked into a final application. For example, CMake supports projects consisting of multiple toolkits (i.e., libraries), where each toolkit might contain several directories, and the application depends on the toolkits plus additional code.

This information is gathered into the cache, which may be changed by the user prior to the generation of the native build files.ĬMake is designed to support complex directory hierarchies and applications dependent on several libraries. For example, when CMake runs, it locates files, libraries, and executables, and may encounter optional build directives. Another nice feature of CMake is that it generates a cache file that is designed to be used with a graphical editor. CMake also supports static and dynamic library builds. CMake supports in-place and out-of-place builds, and can therefore support multiple builds from a single source tree. CMake can generate a native build environment that will compile source code, create libraries, generate wrappers and build executables in arbitrary combinations. Simple configuration files placed in each source directory (called CMakeLists.txt files) are used to generate standard build files (e.g., makefiles on Unix and projects/workspaces in Windows MSVC) which are used in the usual way. Unlike many cross-platform systems, CMake is designed to be used in conjunction with the native build environment. CMake is an extensible, open-source system that manages the build process in an operating system and in a compiler-independent manner.

What does cmake install