Modern CMake for C++/

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Useful Commands

Useful Commands

Let's review the most beneficial beginner commands in CMake.

We'll cover the following...

CMake offers many, many scripting commands that allow us to work with variables and the environment. Some of them are covered extensively in the "Appendix" section, for example, list(), string(), and file(). Others, such as find_...(), fit better in chapters that talk about managing dependencies. In this section, we'll briefly cover the most useful commands for scripts.

The message() command

We already know and love our trusty message() command, which prints text to standard output. However, there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. By providing a MODE argument, we can customize the style of the output, and in the case of an error, we can stop the execution of the code: message(<MODE> "text").

The recognized modes are as follows:

  • FATAL_ERROR: This stops processing and generation.

  • SEND_ERROR: This continues processing, but skips generation.

  • WARNING: This continues processing.

  • AUTHOR_WARNING: A CMake warning. This continues processing.

  • DEPRECATION: This works accordingly if either of the CMAKE_ERROR_DEPRECATED or CMAKE_WARN_DEPRECATED variables are enabled.

  • NOTICE or omitted mode (default): This prints a message to stderr to attract the user's attention.

  • STATUS: This continues processing and is recommended for main messages for users.

  • VERBOSE ...