I have a multiplatform CMake project, and occasionally I have to build it manually for Windows. I generate a buildsystem like this:
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G"Visual Studio 16 2019" -A x64 ../path/to/source
Then I open *sln file and press F7 to build. It runs for 40 minutes, and after that I understand that I didn't select proper configuration in the combobox. It's annoying! When command line option was -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release, but combobox was set to Debug, build fails after spending a decent time.
Is it possible to generate an MSVS project with build configuration selected from command line?
Note that I'm aware of msbuild command and it's -p:Configuration=xxxxx flag. The question is about cases when for some reason you need to build from Visual Studio's GUI.
Changing the selected configuration for the GUI is not possible with CMake at this moment.
The main reason for this is that this information is stored in the .suo file generated by Visual Studio. CMake itself only generates the project and solution files, while the .suo file will be generated by Visual Studio itself.
Alternatively, use CMake's command line build option for this. After configuring your project and generating the VS .sln file from CMake as usual, simply run:
cmake --build <path_to_build_directory> --config Release
This works independently of the selected generator and is the most reliable way of building CMake projects.
Related
The Visual Studio 2019 project, which was built via cmake displays
File Modification Detected
The project ABC has been modified outside the environment
Reload ... Ignore ...
message.
How can I prevent cmake from updating the VS config files, for the project or system wide?
In what section of the cmake build files this behavior is defined (so that I can rebuild the project without this feature)?
No, you cannot prevent this (afaik). Consider the scenario where you add a source file to a target in a CMakeLists.txt file. CMake needs to update the Visual Studio project files it generated which results in project file(s) being overwritten. CMake sets up the solution in a way to ensure such an update on a modification of the cmake files. Visual Studio reacts to the solution/project files being overwritten by displaying the dialog you mentioned.
In general you'll want to click "Reload" which should just update the projects according to the modification in the cmake sources. If for a command line build tool shows up though, you may want to select "Ignore" though, since sometimes the build output is deleted on a reload of projects/the solution and you'll probably want to check the error message.
If you're interested: Overriding the project files happens in the ZERO_CHECK target.
If the dialog is displayed on a build even if you did not modify the cmake files since the last build, you may want to check the console for a warning in the output of cmake though; this may indicate that there may be some issue in your cmake files...
I have a Visual Studio 2019 CMake project and i need to run a postbuild script which copys a file (The file is not generated by the build process). What i did so far is add a custom command in CMake with
add_custom_command(TARGET testExec POST_BUILD COMMAND "../postbuild.bat")
The postbuild.bat would copy the file. This works great most of the time but when my build fails due to some compile error, the postbuild script won't be executed.
How can i run the postbuild script even if the build fails ? I know there is a similar question here but sadly no proper solution. If there is a way to configure a postbuild event directly inside a Visual Studio CMake project this would also be suitable, but it seems like this is not possible (because in a cmake project i don't have a project file).
Since The copied file is not generated by the build you can use PRE_BUILD. On Visual Studio Generators, it runs before any other rules are executed within the target.(https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/command/add_custom_command.html).
The other solution could be to use add_custom_command(OUTPUT as the file seems independent of the build.
I have a pretty large software library using CMake to be compiled. We use Linux mostly, but now a new colleague wants to use Visual Studio.
Is there any way to create a new VS 2017 project from the existing source codes with CMake structure?
I know, it's possible to do it with CLion, but I have no idea about VS, as I have a very little experience with it.
Other questions seem to focus on creating an empty project, which will use CMake, but not on creating a project from already existing source files.
Creating a cmake project with visual studio
Creating a project with visual studio 2017
I'm not sure why you asked for details but...
Assuming you are using cmake 3.13 then you can do the following in a command shell:
cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017" -S path_to_source -B path_to_build
This will then create a solution file. Actually it creates a solution file for every project() command that is issued in CMakeLists.txt.
You can then open the solution file in Visual Studio, and build the project as usual.
You don't even need to do this in the Visual Studio GUI. After creating the initial project you can also issue the command:
cmake --build path_to_build
Which will kick off the build at the command line.
Now if your CMakeLists.txt in path_to_source is using Linux specific libraries or gcc specific compiler settings then the CMakeLists.txt will have to get updated to the Windows equivalent.
The alternative is to start Visual Studio and then use File->Open->CMake and open the CMakeLists.txt file in path_to_source. It'll then start to generate the project. But I prefer using the command line method.
I have an old script to create Visual Studio Project Files to build libraries. The syntax is
cd Kernel
cd core
qmake -t vclib
cd ccMigration
qmake -t vclib
cd ..
and so on for all of the different directories.
I understand why we use qmake and vclib, but what I am not sure is what is the use of -t in this line:
qmake -t vclib
Looking at this : http://doc.qt.io/archives/qt-5.5/qmake-platform-notes.html it says:
Creating Visual Studio Project Files This section describes how to
import an existing qmake project into Visual Studio. qmake is able to
take a project file and create a Visual Studio project that contains
all the necessary information required by the development environment.
This is achieved by setting the qmake project template to either vcapp
(for application projects) or vclib (for library projects).
This can also be set using a command line option, for example:
qmake -tp vc
Why do they use -tp and is the old script syntax correct by using -t?
After I run the script it takes about 1/2 seconds and where can I find the project files for Visual Studio?
Finally, When I open the project files how can I build a library using Visual Studio? Can someone point me to a place where I can read some material?
Thank you for all the help!
Edit: I ran the script and it created .vcproj files in the directories that qmake was run. Example: In folder Kernel -> core it created ccCore.vcproj project file. When I open the file in Visual Studio 2017 it wanted me to perform a One-way upgrade that will automatically make functional changes to the project in order to open it. Is this okay?
I'm trying to use the msbuild to build visual studio project using command line.
I used this commands
SET VCTargetsPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V120
msbuild.exe ../../../embedded/ports/visualC12/config-from-host.vcxproj
/p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=Win32 /t:rebuild
Using IDE : it took around 2 min
Using cmdline: it took around 20 min
In command line it looks like it build a lot of projects that are not built in the IDE
Any suggestions?
In command line it looks like it build a lot of projects that are not built in the IDE Any suggestions?
That because you are using the property /t:rebuild in your command.
This switch performs the same function as the Rebuild Solution menu command within the integrated development environment (IDE)-will clean and then build the solution from scratch, ignoring anything it's done before. So MSBuild will build all projects regardless of whether them were built before or not.
When you build projects in IDE with build option ranther than Rebuild, it will perform an incremental build: if it doesn't think it needs to rebuild a project, it won't. It may also use partially-built bits of the project if they haven't changed. That is the reason for a lot of projects build in command line but are not built in the IDE.
To make the build faster, you can change the property to /t:build in command line or select rebuild option when you build in IDE.
Besides, there are many factors that affect the speed of building, for example, parallel. When we build multiple projects in IDE, the default value of parallel is 8, Tools->options->Projects and Solutions->Build and Run:
MSBuild command line is also support parallel, /maxcpucount Switch
msbuild.exe myproj.proj /maxcpucount:3
So when you compare the build speed between the command line and the IDE, you have to make sure that all the relevant settings are the same for command line and IDE.
Hope this helps.