Cmake & vcpkg template

This is a template repository made to quickly set up a project using cmake & vcpkg. I usually use Clion as IDE so this repository have a basic .idea configuration

You can change the name of the project in the CMakeLists.txt and vcpkg.json files.

Bootstrap workspace

Windows

Make sure you installed Visual Studio

Then run the bootstrap script

.\scripts\bootstrap-workspace.bat

GNU/Linux using apt

Install necessary build tools and a C/C++ compiler

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential tar curl zip unzip autoconf libtool g++ gcc

Then run the bootstrap script

./scripts/bootstrap-workspace.sh

Well done your repo is now ready to work with cmake and vcpkg !

Add dependency

You can add any vcpkg dependencies by editing vcpkg.json and then add them to you cmake target with find_package() and target_link_libraries(). You can found more information about cmake integration in the vcpkg documentation

You can found a exemple of adding dependencies in the Installing dependencies exemple with SFML section.

Generate your project

Running generate-cmake-*.sh will install dependencies if required and then generate your cmake solution.

Use it every times you add a dependency or modify CMakeLists.txt

Windows

# For debug build
.\scripts\generate-cmake-debug.bat
# For release build
.\scripts\generate-cmake-release.bat

Unix

# For debug build
./scripts/generate-cmake-debug.sh
# For release build
./scripts/generate-cmake-release.sh

Compile your project

Cmake will atomatically detect your compiler and generator

Windows

# For debug build
.\scripts\build-debug.bat
# For release build
.\scripts\build-release.bat

Unix

# For debug build
./scripts/build-debug.sh
# For release build
./scripts/build-release.sh

Run your program You can now run the compiled program by looking into out/Debug or out/Release. The out directory hierarchy will be different depending on your generator.

For exemple with Make generator in Debug mode run your program like that

# The executable name will change acording to the value set in add_executable(<name>, ...)
./out/Debug/cmake-vcpkg-template-app

Adding dependencies exemple with SFML :

In this exemple we will add SFML to our project, make it available in our cmake target and then compile a basic exemple program.

Add dependencies to vcpkg :

vcpkg.json

{
  "name": "cmake-vcpkg-template",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "builtin-baseline": "6ca56aeb457f033d344a7106cb3f9f1abf8f4e98",
  "dependencies": [
    {
      "name" : "sfml",
      "version>=" : "2.5.1#14"
    }
  ]
}

For further information you can check the microsoft documentation about vcpkg.json and vcpkg documentation about manifests dependencies

Add dependencies to your cmake target :

Now that we have added our dependencies to vcpkg we can add them to our cmake target. First we use find_package() to find the package in vcpkg, then we use target_link_libraries() to link it to our target, It is important to call it after the target creation (witch is add_executable in our case).

CMakeLists.txt

...
+ find_package(SFML COMPONENTS system window graphics network CONFIG REQUIRED)

SET(EXECUTABLE_TARGET_NAME cmake-vcpkg-template-app)

add_executable(${EXECUTABLE_TARGET_NAME}
    main.cpp
)

+ target_link_libraries(${EXECUTABLE_TARGET_NAME}
+     PRIVATE sfml-system sfml-network sfml-graphics sfml-window
+ )
...

You must reload your cmake project and reset cache in your IDE or directly with the cmake command to make it work.

./scripts/generate-cmake-debug.sh

In case of issues while running vcpkg install

Pay attention at this kind of message of vcpkg :

-- SFML currently requires the following libraries from the system package manager:
    libudev
    libx11
    libxrandr
    libxcursor
    opengl
You can intall them in your system using apt-get install libx11-dev libxrandr-dev libxcursor-dev libxi-dev libudev-dev libgl1-mesa-dev

Most of the time install issues with vcpkg are related to a dynamic library who are not installed in you system. Most of the time vcpkg explain directly how to install them.

Use SFML in our program to make sure our installation is working :

For this exemple we will use the SFML tutorial to make sure our installation is working. After pasting the exemple code in your main.cpp we can now compile our program and run it, you should see a window with a green circle in it and a title "SFML works!".

Congratulations you have successfully installed SFML in your project ! You can now add any other dependencies you want.

To go deaper into cmake integration using vcpkg you can start by the microsoft documentation for cmake integration using libraries

Misc.

Vcpkg triplets

You can found more information about the vcpkg triplets in the vcpkg documentation about triplets

Updating vcpkg submodule

If you need to update vcpkg or you encounter issues with it you can update the vcpkg submodule with :

git submodule update --remote

After finished it should write in stdout something like :

Submodule path 'vcpkg': checked out '<new-commit-sha>'

Update the builtin-baseline in vcpkg.json

{
    "name" : "cmake-vcpkg-template",
    "version" : "0.1.0",
-   "builtin-baseline" : "4874bea8eb8db9e6610672cccdd6ccd5d55c6f1a",
+   "builtin-baseline" : <new-commit-sha>,
    "dependencies" : []
}

And then commit the modification

git add .
git commit -m "Update vcpkg to it lastest version"