Professional CMake:

Synopsis

CMake is a very popular tool for defining how projects should be built, tested and packaged. Its maturity, breadth of features, broad platform support and toolchain flexibility have led to its widespread adoption among the software development community. It has even become the de facto standard build system for C++ projects. The CMake 3.x release series has brought with it a whole new set of powerful capabilities and best practices, leading to the coining of the term Modern CMake. But “modern” is a moving target. Therefore, a key motivation for this book is to provide developers with an up-to-date, practical guide to learning CMake, paying particular attention to the latest best practices.

Part I: Getting Started

The first part of the book covers the essential steps for getting up and running quickly with a basic project. It assumes no prior experience with CMake. It introduces the reader to the most pivotal CMake concepts (especially targets) and each of the main tools: cmake, ctest and cpack. It also points out a few common things for new users to avoid. By the end of this section, the reader will have a basic working project they can use to explore and experiment with as they build their knowledge through the rest of the book.

Part II: Fundamentals

The chapters in this part of the book cover fundamental concepts and CMake features that will be used extensively by most projects. As the reader works through each chapter and gains familiarity with each new topic, they will be able to do progressively more with their own projects and those of others. These chapters cover the real bread-and-butter of CMake! The last chapter in this part, Compiler And Linker Essentials, contains some of the most important material in the whole book.

Part III: Builds In Depth

This part of the book goes into much greater detail about various key areas associated with building a CMake project. The chapters take on a more task-focused flavor, allowing the developer to skip around and gain knowledge about the specific areas most relevant to their own projects. The Build Performance chapter is especially likely to be a popular read, covering material that can potentially lead to drastic reductions in build times, and more efficient use of build resources.

Some chapters go even deeper than discussing CMake alone. Topics covered include advanced linking techniques, how to structure libraries, managing versioning across platforms, and an in-depth treatment of Apple-specific technologies such as bundles, frameworks and code signing.

The many recommended practices in this part of the book demonstrate how developers can get the most out of CMake’s extensive feature set. They also draw attention to a number of common but discouraged practices and explain why they should be avoided.

Part IV: Testing And Analysis

CMake provides extensive support for testing projects. The first chapter in this part of the book teaches the most important knowledge about these features up front. Subsequent chapters then focus on specific areas of CMake’s testing functionality. Again, the reader can skip around the later chapters after getting a good grounding in the Testing Fundamentals chapter.

The two code analysis chapters in this part of the book are also sure to be popular. They bring the power and confidence of a variety of analysis tools and techniques to CMake projects. CMake’s direct support for clang-tidy, cppcheck, cpplint and include-what-you-use is explained. This is complemented by the material on sanitizers and code coverage, which brings together much hard-won and scattered knowledge into a single, coherent place. A complete working sanitizers example is also included at the end of the book as an appendix.

Part V: Deployment And Dependencies

Developers often find the deployment and dependency handling aspects of software development difficult. This part of the book equips the reader with the knowledge needed to get the most out of what CMake offers for these closely related areas. It gives detailed instructions for how to define what a project installs, how to assemble those artifacts into packages in various formats, how to export CMake-specific package details for other projects to consume, and more. It also equips the reader with the knowledge to choose between and implement the most appropriate way to consume other projects as dependencies.

Part VI: Project Organization

This part of the book deals with more high-level aspects of a CMake project. It covers the important topic of CMake presets, which are proving to be very popular with developers as a way of simplifying their day-to-day workflow. It also covers how to structure a project, laying out recommendations and advice that give production-scale projects a solid foundation for maintainability and growth.

Part VII: Special Topics

The final part of the book contains a chapter dedicated to the special area of Qt support. It includes discussion of features provided by both CMake and Qt, covering topics including moc, uic and rcc support, translation handling and using Qt’s deployment tools.