Using CMake to generate Visual Studio C project files

Question

I am working on an open source C   project  for code that compiles on Linux and Windows  I use CMake to build the code on Linux  For ease of development setup and political reasons  I must stick to Visual Studio project files editor on Windows  I can t switch to Code  Blocks  for example   I see instructions to generate Visual Studio files using CMake  as here   Have you used CMake to generate Visual Studio files before  How has been your experience  Suppose I want to add a new file to my project  What is the workflow for this

User · Accepted Answer

CMake is actually pretty good for this  The key part was everyone on the Windows side has to remember to run CMake before loading in the solution  and everyone on our Mac side would have to remember to run it before make    The hardest part was as a Windows developer making sure your structural changes were in the cmakelist txt file and not in the solution or project files as those changes would probably get lost and even if not lost would not get transferred over to the Mac side who also needed them  and the Mac guys would need to remember not to modify the make file for the same reasons   It just requires a little thought and patience  but there will be mistakes at first  But if you are using continuous integration on both sides then these will get shook out early  and people will eventually get in the habit

User · Answer

We moved our department s build chain to CMake  and we had a few internal roadbumps since other departments where using our project files and where accustomed to just importing them into their solutions  We also had some complaints about CMake not being fully integrated into the Visual Studio project solution manager  so files had to be added manually to CMakeLists txt  this was a major break in the workflow people were used to   But in general  it was a quite smooth transition  We re very happy since we don t have to deal with project files anymore   The concrete workflow for adding a new file to a project is really simple    Create the file  make sure it is in the correct place  Add the file to CMakeLists txt  Build    CMake 2 6 automatically reruns itself if any CMakeLists txt files have changed  and  semi- automatically reloads the solution projects    Remember that if you re doing out-of-source builds  you need to be careful not to create the source file in the build directory  since Visual Studio only knows about the build directory

User · Answer

As Alex says  it works very well  The only tricky part is to remember to make any changes in the cmake files  rather than from within Visual Studio  So on all platforms  the workflow is similar to if you d used plain old makefiles   But it s fairly easy to work with  and I ve had no issues with cmake generating invalid files or anything like that  so I wouldn t worry too much

User · Answer

CMake produces Visual Studio Projects and Solutions seamlessly  You can even produce projects solutions for different Visual Studio versions without making any changes to the CMake files   Adding and removing source files is just a matter of modifying the CMakeLists txt which has the list of source files and regenerating the projects solutions  There is even a globbing function to find all the sources in a directory  though it should be used with caution    The following link explains CMake and Visual Studio specific behavior very well   CMake and Visual Studio

User · Answer

As Alex says  it works very well  The only tricky part is to remember to make any changes in the cmake files  rather than from within Visual Studio  So on all platforms  the workflow is similar to if you d used plain old makefiles   But it s fairly easy to work with  and I ve had no issues with cmake generating invalid files or anything like that  so I wouldn t worry too much

User · Answer

We moved our department s build chain to CMake  and we had a few internal roadbumps since other departments where using our project files and where accustomed to just importing them into their solutions  We also had some complaints about CMake not being fully integrated into the Visual Studio project solution manager  so files had to be added manually to CMakeLists txt  this was a major break in the workflow people were used to   But in general  it was a quite smooth transition  We re very happy since we don t have to deal with project files anymore   The concrete workflow for adding a new file to a project is really simple    Create the file  make sure it is in the correct place  Add the file to CMakeLists txt  Build    CMake 2 6 automatically reruns itself if any CMakeLists txt files have changed  and  semi- automatically reloads the solution projects    Remember that if you re doing out-of-source builds  you need to be careful not to create the source file in the build directory  since Visual Studio only knows about the build directory

User · Answer

As Alex says  it works very well  The only tricky part is to remember to make any changes in the cmake files  rather than from within Visual Studio  So on all platforms  the workflow is similar to if you d used plain old makefiles   But it s fairly easy to work with  and I ve had no issues with cmake generating invalid files or anything like that  so I wouldn t worry too much

User · Answer

Not sure if it s directly related to the question  but I was looking for an answer for how to generate   sln from cmake projects I ve discovered that one can use something like this   cmake -G  Visual Studio 10    The example generates needed VS 2010 files from an input CMakeLists txt file

User · Answer

CMake produces Visual Studio Projects and Solutions seamlessly  You can even produce projects solutions for different Visual Studio versions without making any changes to the CMake files   Adding and removing source files is just a matter of modifying the CMakeLists txt which has the list of source files and regenerating the projects solutions  There is even a globbing function to find all the sources in a directory  though it should be used with caution    The following link explains CMake and Visual Studio specific behavior very well   CMake and Visual Studio

User · Answer

As Alex says  it works very well  The only tricky part is to remember to make any changes in the cmake files  rather than from within Visual Studio  So on all platforms  the workflow is similar to if you d used plain old makefiles   But it s fairly easy to work with  and I ve had no issues with cmake generating invalid files or anything like that  so I wouldn t worry too much

User · Answer

CMake can generate really nice Visual Studio  projs  slns  but there is always the problem with the need to modify the  cmake files rather than  proj  sln  As it is now  we are dealing with it as follows    All source files go to  src and files visible in Visual Studio are just  links  to them defined in  filter  Programmer adds deletes files remembering to work on the defined  src directory  not the default project s one  When he s done  he run a script that  refreshes  the respective  cmake files  He checks if the code can be built in the recreated environment  He commits the code    At first we were a little afraid of how it will turn out  but the workflow works really well and with nice diff visible before each commit  everyone can easily see if his changes were correctly mapped in  cmake files   One more important thing to know about is the lack of support  afaik  for  Solution Configurations  in CMake  As it stands  you have to generate two directories with projects solutions - one for each build type  debug  release  etc    There is no direct support for more sophisticated features - in other words  switching between configurations won t give you what you might expect

User · Answer

CMake can generate really nice Visual Studio  projs  slns  but there is always the problem with the need to modify the  cmake files rather than  proj  sln  As it is now  we are dealing with it as follows    All source files go to  src and files visible in Visual Studio are just  links  to them defined in  filter  Programmer adds deletes files remembering to work on the defined  src directory  not the default project s one  When he s done  he run a script that  refreshes  the respective  cmake files  He checks if the code can be built in the recreated environment  He commits the code    At first we were a little afraid of how it will turn out  but the workflow works really well and with nice diff visible before each commit  everyone can easily see if his changes were correctly mapped in  cmake files   One more important thing to know about is the lack of support  afaik  for  Solution Configurations  in CMake  As it stands  you have to generate two directories with projects solutions - one for each build type  debug  release  etc    There is no direct support for more sophisticated features - in other words  switching between configurations won t give you what you might expect

User · Answer

I ve started my own project  called syncProj  Documentation   download links from here   https   docs google com document d 1C1YrbFUVpTBXajbtrC62aXru2om6dy5rClyknBj5zHU edit  https   sourceforge net projects syncproj   If you re planning to use Visual studio for development  and currently only C   is supported   Main advantage compared to other make systems is that you can actually debug your script  as it s C  based   If you re not familiar with syncProj  you can just convert your solution   project to  cs script  and continue further development from that point on   In cmake you will need to write everything from scratch

User · Answer

I ve started my own project  called syncProj  Documentation   download links from here   https   docs google com document d 1C1YrbFUVpTBXajbtrC62aXru2om6dy5rClyknBj5zHU edit  https   sourceforge net projects syncproj   If you re planning to use Visual studio for development  and currently only C   is supported   Main advantage compared to other make systems is that you can actually debug your script  as it s C  based   If you re not familiar with syncProj  you can just convert your solution   project to  cs script  and continue further development from that point on   In cmake you will need to write everything from scratch

User · Answer

We moved our department s build chain to CMake  and we had a few internal roadbumps since other departments where using our project files and where accustomed to just importing them into their solutions  We also had some complaints about CMake not being fully integrated into the Visual Studio project solution manager  so files had to be added manually to CMakeLists txt  this was a major break in the workflow people were used to   But in general  it was a quite smooth transition  We re very happy since we don t have to deal with project files anymore   The concrete workflow for adding a new file to a project is really simple    Create the file  make sure it is in the correct place  Add the file to CMakeLists txt  Build    CMake 2 6 automatically reruns itself if any CMakeLists txt files have changed  and  semi- automatically reloads the solution projects    Remember that if you re doing out-of-source builds  you need to be careful not to create the source file in the build directory  since Visual Studio only knows about the build directory

User · Answer

Lots of great answers here but they might be superseded by this CMake support in Visual Studio  Oct 5 2016

User · Answer

Not sure if it s directly related to the question  but I was looking for an answer for how to generate   sln from cmake projects I ve discovered that one can use something like this   cmake -G  Visual Studio 10    The example generates needed VS 2010 files from an input CMakeLists txt file

User · Answer

Lots of great answers here but they might be superseded by this CMake support in Visual Studio  Oct 5 2016

User · Answer

We moved our department s build chain to CMake  and we had a few internal roadbumps since other departments where using our project files and where accustomed to just importing them into their solutions  We also had some complaints about CMake not being fully integrated into the Visual Studio project solution manager  so files had to be added manually to CMakeLists txt  this was a major break in the workflow people were used to   But in general  it was a quite smooth transition  We re very happy since we don t have to deal with project files anymore   The concrete workflow for adding a new file to a project is really simple    Create the file  make sure it is in the correct place  Add the file to CMakeLists txt  Build    CMake 2 6 automatically reruns itself if any CMakeLists txt files have changed  and  semi- automatically reloads the solution projects    Remember that if you re doing out-of-source builds  you need to be careful not to create the source file in the build directory  since Visual Studio only knows about the build directory

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