CMake cisst

Important note: this page is for cisst library developers. For cisst users, see Using CMake to build cisst and your programs.

For the cisst libraries developers, we have a few important macros that should be used to maintain the consistency of the CMake configuration:

• cisst_set_package_settings: this macro allows to save some specific settings associated to a given cisst library. For example, in cisstMultiTask MakeLists.txt configuration file, cisst_set_package_settings (cisstMultiTask ZeroCIce INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES ICE_INCLUDE_DIR) indicates that any library compiled against cisstMultiTask will need to use some extra include directories (keyword INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES) because cisstMultiTask has been compiled against ZeroC Ice. The extra include directories are defined by the CMake variable ICE_INCLUDE_DIR defined by FindICE.cmake. The following settings can be saved:

  • INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES: will be used with CMake include_directories in the cisst use file (include (${CISST_USE_FILE})

  • LIBRARIES: will be used by cisst_target_link_libraries

  • LINK_DIRECTORIES: will be used with CMake link_directories in the cisst use file (include (${CISST_USE_FILE})

  • PACKAGES, PACKAGE_COMPONENTS and CMAKE_FILES: will be used by CMake find_package and include in the cisst use file (include (${CISST_USE_FILE})

• cisst_unset_all_package_settings: this macro is used to remove all settings. For example cisst_unset_all_package_settings (cisstMultiTask ZeroCIce) tells that cisstMultiTask doesn't use ZeroC Ice anymore. For all external dependencies, the CMake configuration should have an if else endif to make sure settings are removed when an external dependency is either not found or turned off by the user.

• cisst_add_library: this macro is used to add a new library. For example, the `cisstVectorQt CMakeLists.txt CMake configuration file] contains:

  cisst_add_library (
    LIBRARY cisstVectorQt
    LIBRARY_DIR cisstVector
    DEPENDENCIES cisstCommon cisstVector
    SOURCE_FILES vctPlot2DOpenGLQtWidget.cpp
    HEADER_FILES vctPlot2DOpenGLQtWidget.h vctExportQt.h
    ADDITIONAL_SOURCE_FILES ${QT_WRAPPED_CPP})

  In this example the following keywords are used:

  • LIBRARY: name of the library to be generated
  • LIBRARY_DIR: relative path to include files from the cisst source directory, i.e. trunk/cisst/
  • DEPENDENCIES: list of cisst libraries required for this library
  • SOURCE_FILES: list of source files found in the current source directory, i.e. directory containing this CMakeLists.txt file
  • HEADER_FILES: list of header files found in the LIBRARY_DIR. In this example, header files are found in trunk/cisst/cisstVector
  • ADDITIONAL_SOURCE_FILES (and ADDITIONAL_HEADER_FILES): extra source (header) files not found in the default directories. These can be generated files, private header files, ...