[c++] Automatically add all files in a folder to a target using CMake?

I am considering switching a cross platform project from separate build management systems in Visual C++, XCode and makefiles to CMake.

One essential feature I need is to add automatically all files in a directory to a target. While this is easy to do with make, it is not easily doable with Visual C++ and XCode (correct me if I am wrong). Is it possible to do it in directly in CMake? How?

So Why not use powershell to create the list of source files for you. Take a look at this script

param (
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$True)]
    [string]$root 
)

if (-not (Test-Path  -Path $root)) {    
throw "Error directory does not exist"
}

#get the full path of the root
$rootDir = get-item -Path $root
$fp=$rootDir.FullName;


$files = Get-ChildItem -Path $root -Recurse -File | 
         Where-Object { ".cpp",".cxx",".cc",".h" -contains $_.Extension} | 
         Foreach {$_.FullName.replace("${fp}\","").replace("\","/")}

$CMakeExpr = "set(SOURCES "

foreach($file in $files){

    $CMakeExpr+= """$file"" " ;
}
$CMakeExpr+=")"
return $CMakeExpr;

Suppose you have a folder with this structure

C:\Workspace\A
--a.cpp
C:\Workspace\B 
--b.cpp

Now save this file as "generateSourceList.ps1" for example, and run the script as

~>./generateSourceList.ps1 -root "C:\Workspace" > out.txt

out.txt file will contain

set(SOURCE "A/a.cpp" "B/b.cpp")

Extension for @Kleist answer:

Since CMake 3.12 additional option CONFIGURE_DEPENDS is supported by commands file(GLOB) and file(GLOB_RECURSE). With this option there is no needs to manually re-run CMake after addition/deletion of a source file in the directory - CMake will be re-run automatically on next building the project.

However, the option CONFIGURE_DEPENDS implies that corresponding directory will be re-checked every time building is requested, so build process would consume more time than without CONFIGURE_DEPENDS.

Even with CONFIGURE_DEPENDS option available CMake documentation still does not recommend using file(GLOB) or file(GLOB_RECURSE) for collect the sources.

The answer by Kleist certainly works, but there is an important caveat:

When you write a Makefile manually, you might generate a SRCS variable using a function to select all .cpp and .h files. If a source file is later added, re-running make will include it.

However, CMake (with a command like file(GLOB ...)) will explicitly generate a file list and place it in the auto-generated Makefile. If you have a new source file, you will need to re-generate the Makefile by re-running cmake.

edit: No need to remove the Makefile.