CMake

Before beginning to create a project and try to compile it with PyCmake, you must create a CMake object. He will used to manage common features and can receive your compilers:

cmake = CMake()

Now you can add set global settings of CMake:

min_required = 'VERSION 3.5'
policy = 'VERSION 3.5'
cmake.add_settings(min_required, policy)

Compilers

You must add at least one compiler to get PyCmake functional. Then you can add other compilers, flags for each of them and manage global settings of CMake.

Valid compiler_id are currently:

• GCC or G++
• CLANG or CLANG++
• MSVC or MSVC++

Let’s create a Compiler for GNU:

compiler = Compiler()
compiler_id = 'G++'
compiler.create('G++-5', 'C++', compiler_id, 5, '/usr/bin/g++-5')

Now that the compiler was created, we can add it to our cmake object. CMake object has method and members for each supported compiler:

cmake.gnu_compiler(compiler)
# Or for Clang:
# cmake.clang_compiler(compiler)
# And for MSVC
# cmake.msvc_compiler(compiler)

The advantage with the object Compiler is that you can easily use create() to create a new one and add it to our object CMake. But take care, it will replace the previous values.

For Windows:

You have to precise full path of .bat you want to execute before compiling, if you want to use NMake Makefiles.

Example: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\bin\amd64\vcvars64.bat”.

Flags

Your compiler can receive flags to ensure your project compiles as needed. You need object Flags to make it:

gcc_flags = Flags('G++-5 Flags', '-std=c++11', 'Wall', '-GL')
cmake.flags_to_compiler(compiler_id, gcc_flags)

As you can see, flags name is not important, that’s compiler_id who make the link between your flags and your compilers.

Now your CMake is ready to receive a Project.

Before Continuing

When you use PyCmake, you must pay attention to the way that you will give your projects.

Paths should be relative depending on the folder in which your CMakeLists.txt will be located. No matter where you run your python script, your paths must first consider this location.

For example, you will run your script in /home/user/scripts or other, no matter.

Let’s say your project sources are located in /home/user/workspace/project/src and your CMakeLists.txt will be write in folder /home/user/workspace/project/platform/cmake.

If you want to add sources, your paths will be something like ../../src. Example:

project.add_source_files('files',
                         'mylib',
                         True,
                         '../../src/file.cpp'
                        )

See Files and Directories for more information.

Other case is when you want define PROJECT_DIR variable and use it throughout your script. You have to give the following path:

project.variables.project_dir('../../')

Because CMake must go up two folders to define the root of your project (see CMake Variables).