How do you set properties in a vcproj file with cmake? - windows

vcproj files for Visual Studio contain various settings or properties which affect the build. For instance, a few of the ones that a project that I'm trying to convert to cmake uses are
StringPooling="true"
RuntimeLibrary="2"
TreatWChar_tAsBuiltInType="true"
WarningLevel="3"
Detect64BitPortabilityProblems="false"
There are of course plenty of others that could be set. The question is how to set them when the project is generated using cmake. Does anyone have any idea how to set these sort of properties when using cmake other than editing the vcproj file after the fact? I can't find anything explaining how these sort of properties might be set via cmake. The only ones that I know how to set are ones that cmake specifically has cross-platform stuff for (e.g. PreprocessorDefinitions or AdditionalIncludeDirectories). But I need to be able to set ones that are specific to Visual Studio.

For the flags you've listed, you'd add the following to your CMakeLists.txt:
if(MSVC)
# StringPooling: true == /GF false == /GF-
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} /GF")
# RuntimeLibrary
# 0 (MultiThreaded) == /MT
# 1 (MultiThreadedDebug) == /MTd
# 2 (MultiThreadedDLL) == /MD
# 3 (MultiThreadedDebugDLL) == /MDd
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE} /MD")
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG} /MDd")
# TreatWChar_tAsBuiltInType: true == /Zc:wchar_t false == /Zc:wchar_t-
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} /Zc:wchar_t")
# WarningLevel: /W<level 0 to 4> or /Wall
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} /W3")
# Detect64BitPortabilityProblems: /Wp64 - Deprecated since VC++ 2010
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} /Wp64")
endif()
You can group these in one call if you want:
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} /GF /Zc:wchar_t /W3 /Wp64")
If you only need to add a flag to a single target (say, MyTestExe), you can do:
set_target_properties(MyTestExe PROPERTIES COMPILE_FLAGS "/GF- /W2")
Options set via this target-specific method will override any conflicting ones in the general CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS variable.
For further info on these commands do:
cmake --help-variable "CMAKE_<LANG>_FLAGS_DEBUG"
cmake --help-command set_target_properties
cmake --help-property COMPILE_FLAGS
The Visual Studio compiler options are listed here.

Each of these properties corresponds to a command-line option of the compiler (cl). You set these command line options in your CMakeList (using variables like CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS, commands like add_definitions() and properties like COMPILE_FLAGS) and CMake automatically translates them to the settings in .vc[x]proj files when generating them. Those it does not understand are just added as "Additional command-line options".

In general, you can do it like this:
set_target_properties(target_name
PROPERTIES VS_GLOBAL_CAExcludePath "....")
"VS_GLOBAL_ can be set to add a Visual Studio project-specific global variable. Qt integration works better if VS_GLOBAL_QtVersion is set to the Qt version FindQt4.cmake found. For example, “4.7.3”" source: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.20/prop_tgt/VS_GLOBAL_variable.html

Related

How to add CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS and LDFLAGS to file.cmake? [duplicate]

I am using the arm-linux-androideabi-g++ compiler. When I try to compile a simple "Hello, World!" program it compiles fine. When I test it by adding a simple exception handling in that code it works too (after adding -fexceptions .. I guess it is disabled by default).
This is for an Android device, and I only want to use CMake, not ndk-build.
For example - first.cpp
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
try
{
}
catch (...)
{
}
return 0;
}
./arm-linux-androideadi-g++ -o first-test first.cpp -fexceptions
It works with no problem...
The problem ... I am trying to compile the file with a CMake file.
I want to add the -fexceptions as a flag. I tried with
set (CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS -fexceptions ) or set (CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "fexceptions" )
and
set ( CMAKE_C_FLAGS "fexceptions")
It still displays an error.
Note: Given CMake evolution since this was answer was written in 2012, most of the suggestions here are now outdated/deprecated and have better alternatives.
Suppose you want to add those flags (better to declare them in a constant):
SET(GCC_COVERAGE_COMPILE_FLAGS "-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage")
SET(GCC_COVERAGE_LINK_FLAGS "-lgcov")
There are several ways to add them:
The easiest one (not clean, but easy and convenient, and works only for compile flags, C & C++ at once):
add_definitions(${GCC_COVERAGE_COMPILE_FLAGS})
Appending to corresponding CMake variables:
SET(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} ${GCC_COVERAGE_COMPILE_FLAGS}")
SET(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "${CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS} ${GCC_COVERAGE_LINK_FLAGS}")
Using target properties, cf. doc CMake compile flag target property and need to know the target name.
get_target_property(TEMP ${THE_TARGET} COMPILE_FLAGS)
if(TEMP STREQUAL "TEMP-NOTFOUND")
SET(TEMP "") # Set to empty string
else()
SET(TEMP "${TEMP} ") # A space to cleanly separate from existing content
endif()
# Append our values
SET(TEMP "${TEMP}${GCC_COVERAGE_COMPILE_FLAGS}" )
set_target_properties(${THE_TARGET} PROPERTIES COMPILE_FLAGS ${TEMP} )
Right now I use method 2.
In newer versions of CMake you can set compiler and linker flags for a single target with target_compile_options and target_link_libraries respectively (yes, the latter sets linker options too):
target_compile_options(first-test PRIVATE -fexceptions)
The advantage of this method is that you can control propagation of options to other targets that depend on this one via PUBLIC and PRIVATE.
As of CMake 3.13 you can also use target_link_options to add linker options which makes the intent more clear.
Try setting the variable CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS instead of CMAKE_C_FLAGS:
set (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-fexceptions")
The variable CMAKE_C_FLAGS only affects the C compiler, but you are compiling C++ code.
Adding the flag to CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS is redundant.
The preferred way to specify toolchain-specific options is using CMake's toolchain facility. This ensures that there is a clean division between:
instructions on how to organise source files into targets -- expressed in CMakeLists.txt files, entirely toolchain-agnostic; and
details of how certain toolchains should be configured -- separated into CMake script files, extensible by future users of your project, scalable.
Ideally, there should be no compiler/linker flags in your CMakeLists.txt files -- even within if/endif blocks. And your program should build for the native platform with the default toolchain (e.g. GCC on GNU/Linux or MSVC on Windows) without any additional flags.
Steps to add a toolchain:
Create a file, e.g. arm-linux-androideadi-gcc.cmake with global toolchain settings:
set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER arm-linux-gnueabihf-g++)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_INIT "-fexceptions")
(You can find an example Linux cross-compiling toolchain file here.)
When you want to generate a build system with this toolchain, specify the CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE parameter on the command line:
mkdir android-arm-build && cd android-arm-build
cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=$(pwd)/../arm-linux-androideadi-gcc.cmake ..
(Note: you cannot use a relative path.)
Build as normal:
cmake --build .
Toolchain files make cross-compilation easier, but they have other uses:
Hardened diagnostics for your unit tests.
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_INIT "-Werror -Wall -Wextra -Wpedantic")
Tricky-to-configure development tools.
# toolchain file for use with gcov
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_INIT "--coverage -fno-exceptions -g")
Enhanced safety checks.
# toolchain file for use with gdb
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG_INIT "-fsanitize=address,undefined -fsanitize-undefined-trap-on-error")
set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS_INIT "-fsanitize=address,undefined -static-libasan")
You can also add linker flags to a specific target using the LINK_FLAGS property:
set_property(TARGET ${target} APPEND_STRING PROPERTY LINK_FLAGS " ${flag}")
If you want to propagate this change to other targets, you can create a dummy target to link to.
This worked for me when I needed a precompile definition named "NO_DEBUG":
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++14 -DNO_DEBUG")
Then from code
#ifdef NO_DEBUG
.....
With CMake 3.4+, APPEND can be used with the string command to add flags.
string(APPEND CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS " -fexceptions")

Custom MPI Path in CMake Project

I'm building a project that uses MPI.
Here's the CMakeLists.txt
if(__OPENNN_MPI__)
find_package(MPI)
if(MPI_FOUND)
message("Using MPI")
set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER mpicxx)
set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER mpicc)
set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILE_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_COMPILE_FLAGS} ${MPI_COMPILE_FLAGS}")
set(CMAKE_CXX_LINK_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_LINK_FLAGS} ${MPI_LINK_FLAGS}")
add_definitions(-D__OPENNN_MPI__ )
endif()
endif()
What argument to cmake do I pass to enable this block of code.
My MPI Installation is in a custom path, say /path/to/MPI
Do I simply add the MPI path to my $PATH and run cmake . or is there a flag that I should set, like we would set -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH
To tell CMakes FindMPI about a custom installation, it is sufficient to make sure that your custom mpicc and mpicxx is in $PATH. Alternatively, you can supply them as such:
cmake -DMPI_C_COMPILER=/path/to/bin/mpicc -DMPI_CXX_COMPILER=/path/to/bin/mpicxx
CMake will pick up the rest based on the compiler wrappers. You should however not set CMAKE_C_COMPILER / CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER to the MPI compiler wrappers. Instead:
include_directories(SYSTEM ${MPI_INCLUDE_PATH})
And for each C++ target:
target_link_libraries(target ${MPI_CXX_LIBRARIES})
if(MPI_CXX_COMPILE_FLAGS)
set_target_properties(target PROPERTIES COMPILE_FLAGS "${MPI_CXX_COMPILE_FLAGS}")
endif()
if(MPI_CXX_LINK_FLAGS)
set_target_properties(target PROPERTIES LINK_FLAGS "${MPI_CXX_LINK_FLAGS}")
endif()
C targets similarly.

How to change default options of Visual Studio build using CMake

Using Cmake, we use the following command
cmake CMakeLists.txt -G "Visual Studio 11"
to generate a Visual Studio 2012 solution file, which by-default uses /fp:precise as floating point option. Is there any way to change this to /fp:fast in CMake?
You can specify options with various CMake variables, e.g. CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS, CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE, CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG for C++ compiler options. Try set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} /fp:fast"). I think you can also change them from within the GUI (tick the Advanced checkmark). For C you'd have to use the CMAKE_C_FLAGS... variants.

How do I activate C++ 11 in CMake?

When I try to run a CMake generated makefile to compile my program, I get the error that
range based for loops are not supported in C++ 98 mode.
I tried adding add_definitions(-std=c++0x) to my CMakeLists.txt, but it did not help.
I tried this too:
if(CMAKE_COMPILER_IS_GNUCXX)
add_definitions(-std=gnu++0x)
endif()
When I do g++ --version, I get:
g++ (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.1-9ubuntu3) 4.6.1
I have also tried SET(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-std=c++0x"), which also does not work.
I do not understand how I can activate C++ 11 features using CMake.
CMake 3.1 introduced the CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD variable that you can use. If you know that you will always have CMake 3.1 or later available, you can just write this in your top-level CMakeLists.txt file, or put it right before any new target is defined:
set (CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)
If you need to support older versions of CMake (quite unlikely these days), here is a macro I came up with that you can use:
macro(use_cxx11)
if (CMAKE_VERSION VERSION_LESS "3.1")
if (CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ID STREQUAL "GNU")
set (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=gnu++11")
endif ()
else ()
set (CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)
endif ()
endmacro(use_cxx11)
The macro only supports GCC right now, but it should be straight-forward to expand it to other compilers.
Then you could write use_cxx11() at the top of any CMakeLists.txt file that defines a target that uses C++11.
CMake issue #15943 for clang users targeting macOS
If you are using CMake and clang to target macOS there is a bug that can cause the CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD feature to simply not work (not add any compiler flags). Make sure that you do one of the following things:
Use cmake_minimum_required to require CMake 3.0 or later, or
Set policy CMP0025 to NEW with the following code at the top of your CMakeLists.txt file before the project command:
# Fix behavior of CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD when targeting macOS.
if (POLICY CMP0025)
cmake_policy(SET CMP0025 NEW)
endif ()
The CMake command target_compile_features() is used to specify the required C++ feature cxx_range_for. CMake will then induce the C++ standard to be used.
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.1.0 FATAL_ERROR)
project(foobar CXX)
add_executable(foobar main.cc)
target_compile_features(foobar PRIVATE cxx_range_for)
There is no need to use add_definitions(-std=c++11) or to modify the CMake variable CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS, because CMake will make sure the C++ compiler is invoked with the appropriate command line flags.
Maybe your C++ program uses other C++ features than cxx_range_for. The CMake global property CMAKE_CXX_KNOWN_FEATURES lists the C++ features you can choose from.
Instead of using target_compile_features() you can also specify the C++ standard explicitly by setting the CMake properties
CXX_STANDARD
and
CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED for your CMake target.
See also my more detailed answer.
I am using
include(CheckCXXCompilerFlag)
CHECK_CXX_COMPILER_FLAG("-std=c++11" COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX11)
CHECK_CXX_COMPILER_FLAG("-std=c++0x" COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX0X)
if(COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX11)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++11")
elseif(COMPILER_SUPPORTS_CXX0X)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++0x")
else()
message(STATUS "The compiler ${CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER} has no C++11 support. Please use a different C++ compiler.")
endif()
But if you want to play with C++11, g++ 4.6.1 is pretty old.
Try to get a newer g++ version.
The easiest way to set the Cxx standard is:
set_property(TARGET tgt PROPERTY CXX_STANDARD 11)
See the CMake documentation for more details.
On modern CMake (>= 3.1) the best way to set global requirements is:
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON)
set(CMAKE_CXX_EXTENSIONS OFF)
It translates to "I want C++11 for all targets, it's not optional, I don’t want to use any GNU or Microsoft extensions."
As of C++17, this still is IMHO the best way.
Source: Enabling C++11 And Later In CMake
As it turns out, SET(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-std=c++0x") does activate many C++11 features. The reason it did not work was that the statement looked like this:
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-std=c++0x ${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -g -ftest-coverage -fprofile-arcs")
Following this approach, somehow the -std=c++0x flag was overwritten and it did not work. Setting the flags one by one or using a list method is working.
list( APPEND CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-std=c++0x ${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -g -ftest-coverage -fprofile-arcs")
For CMake 3.8 and newer you can use
target_compile_features(target PUBLIC cxx_std_11)
If you want the generation step to fail if the toolchain cannot adhere to this standard, you can make this required.
set_target_properties(target PROPERTIES CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON)
If you want strict adherence to standard C++ i.e. avoid C++ extensions offered by your compiler (like GCC's -std=gnu++17), additionally set
set_target_properties(target PROPERTIES CXX_EXTENSIONS OFF)
This is documented in detail at An Introduction to Modern CMake -> Adding Features -> C++11 and Beyond. It also offers advice on how to achieve this on older versions of CMake if you're constrained to those.
The easiest way:
add_compile_options(-std=c++11)
This is another way of enabling C++11 support,
ADD_DEFINITIONS(
-std=c++11 # Or -std=c++0x
# Other flags
)
I have encountered instances where only this method works and other methods fail. Maybe it has something to do with the latest version of CMake.
Modern cmake offers simpler ways to configure compilers to use a specific version of C++. The only thing anyone needs to do is set the relevant target properties. Among the properties supported by cmake, the ones that are used to determine how to configure compilers to support a specific version of C++ are the following:
CXX_STANDARD sets the C++ standard whose features are requested to build the target. Set this as 11 to target C++11.
CXX_EXTENSIONS, a boolean specifying whether compiler specific extensions are requested. Setting this as Off disables support for any compiler-specific extension.
To demonstrate, here is a minimal working example of a CMakeLists.txt.
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.1)
project(testproject LANGUAGES CXX )
set(testproject_SOURCES
main.c++
)
add_executable(testproject ${testproject_SOURCES})
set_target_properties(testproject
PROPERTIES
CXX_STANDARD 11
CXX_EXTENSIONS off
)
In case you want to always activate the latest C++ standard, here's my extension of David Grayson's answer, in light of the recent (CMake 3.8 and CMake 3.11) additions of values of 17 and 20 for CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD):
IF (CMAKE_VERSION VERSION_LESS "3.8")
SET(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 14)
ELSEIF (CMAKE_VERSION VERSION_LESS "3.11")
SET(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)
ELSE()
SET(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 20)
ENDIF()
# Typically, you'll also want to turn off compiler-specific extensions:
SET(CMAKE_CXX_EXTENSIONS OFF)
(Use that code in the place of set (CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11) in the linked answer.)
What works for me is to set the following line in your CMakeLists.txt:
set (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++11")
Setting this command activates the C++11 features for the compiler and after executing the cmake .. command, you should be able to use range based for loops in your code and compile it without any errors.
I think just these two lines are enough.
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++11")
The modern way is to specify the minimum required standard to C++11 with:
target_compile_features(foo PUBLIC cxx_std_11)
This way:
CMake can honor default C++ standard of the compiler if it's greater than C++11
You can clearly specify whether C++ standard is required at build time, consume time, or both. This is nice for libraries.
Public compile features are propagated to downstream targets, so it comes for free in those targets even if they don't directly use this feature.
Users can externally set another C++ standard (more recent basically), with CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD, either from command line or CMake presets. If you hardcode CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD in a CMakeLists, nobody can override the C++ standard without editing your CMakeLists, which is not very pleasant.
It requires CMake >= 3.8
You can use the following. This automatically modifies the feature based on your environment.
target_compile_features(your_target INTERFACE cxx_std_20)
For example,
on Gnu/Linux the following adds -std=gnu++20
on Windows with Clang/Ninja it becomes -std=c++20
on Windows with MSVC it becomes /std=c++20
So you support as many as environments possible.
In case you stumble on that same error using cmake as i did.
You need to set
set (CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)
to activate threading because it is only supported from c++11 ++
hope that helps
OS X and Homebrew LLVM related:
Don't forget to call cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.3) and project() after it!
Or CMake will insert project() implicitly before line 1, causing trouble with Clang version detection and possibly other sorts of troubles. Here is a related issue.

cmake set_property on SOURCE files with COMPILE_FLAGS

I'm using CMake 2.8.1 (tried this on CMake 2.8.5 too). I'm using the Visual Studio generator for VS2008. I would like to selectively apply compile flags on some some source files differently than for other files, and all of these files are going into the same static library (splitting the library into two different targets is not an option at this time). I cannot use set_target_properties in this case because the compile flags must be different. However I discovered something quite odd. The following works (works being defined that I see the /flubber option show up in the AdditionalOptions fields in the .vcproj file CMake generates):
set_property(SOURCE file1.cpp file2.cpp
PROPERTY COMPILE_FLAGS /flubber
)
But this does not work:
set_property(SOURCE file1.cpp file2.cpp
PROPERTY COMPILE_FLAGS /GR
)
Why is CMake filtering out or ignoring the /GR option? Is that a CMake bug or intentional?
Now this question is a bit contrived given that, circa VS2005, the /GR option was defined to be on by default (gives RTTI), so I really don't have to specify it. But that isn't the point because there are other flags that start with "/G" that are perfectly valid to want to specify on one source file, but not another, and in the same static library target.
Visual Studio provides special option for /GR flag:
cmake knows that and transforms your /GR flag into that option. If you open your cmake-generated project file (.vcproj) with notepad, then you can see additional RuntimeTypeInfo="TRUE" attribute inside your file configuration:
/flubber flag added:
<Tool Name="VCCLCompilerTool" AdditionalOptions="/flubber" />
/GR flag added:
<Tool Name="VCCLCompilerTool" RuntimeTypeInfo="TRUE" />

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