CppFront CMake Wrapper

This project wraps the cppfront repository in a CMake build.

It also acts as a compatibility wrapper for my gcmake-rust tool, so that cppfront can be used out of the box.

Important Note

As of commit 8dd89ec8c9cfe9633286b2768ad0404455e342c7, the latest MinGW ld.exe (GNU binutils 2.40) distributed by msys2 fails to link cppfront.exe when compiling with optimizations off (Debug mode). If you're building in Debug mode with MinGW g++, you must use the -fuse-ld=lld flag to use LLVM's lld linker in place of ld (need to install Clang first).

If using GCMake, set the CMake options -DGCMAKE_ADDITIONAL_COMPILER_FLAGS='fuse-ld=lld' and -DGCMAKE_ADDITIONAL_LINK_TIME_FLAGS='-fuse-ld=lld'. Otherwise, set the CMake option -DCPPFRONT_ADDITIONAL_COMPILER_FLAGS='-fuse-ld=lld'.

Default Build and Install

git clone 'git@github.com:scupit/cppfront-cmake-wrapper.git'
cd cppfront-cmake-wrapper
cmake -B build/ # ... any other CMake options such as -G 'Ninja'
cmake --build build/ --parallel
sudo cmake --install build/ # Or run in an Administrator prompt in Windows

Side note: check out gsudo for a Windows version of the sudo command. It allows me to natively use sudo from PowerShell on Windows, so I don't have to run a whole separate shell instance as Administrator just to run the CMake install step.

CMake Build Options

Option	Default Value	Description
EMBED_CPPFRONT	ON	Whether to clone and build cppfront. When set to OFF, CMake will try to find an existing cppfront installation on the system using find_package instead. This option is really only for internal use by gcmake-rust, and should be left ON.
CPPFRONT_INSTALL	ON when building as the main project, OFF otherwise	When ON, configures installation information so that cppfront can be installed on the system just by running cmake --install your-build-dir/.
CPPFRONT_BUILD_EXAMPLE	ON when building as the main project, OFF otherwise	When ON, builds the example/ project which only uses .cpp2 files for implementation.

Provided Targets

These targets are always provided when embedding cppfront or by finding it using the provided Find module Findcppfront.cmake

Target	Type	Description
cppfront::compiler	Executable	The cppfront compiler executable (cppfront.exe, for example). This can be used as the COMMAND in calls to add_custom_command and add_custom_target.
cppfront::artifacts	Interface Library	Used to pass along build information needed by files cppfront generates. This includes "include directories" (include/cpp2util.h), flags, c++ standards, etc.. cppfront::artifacts should be PRIVATE linked to any target which is built using cpp files generated by cppfront. target_link_libraries is what you want.

Provided Files

EmbedCppFront

EmbedCppFront.cmake contains the core script which clones and builds cppfront as part of your project. To use, just copy the file into your project's cmake/ directory and call

include( cmake/EmbedCppFront.cmake )

inside your toplevel CMakeLists.txt. It should work out of the box.

Findcppfront

Findcppfront.cmake is a CMake Find Module. When invoked using find_package, CMake will look for an existing cppfront installation on your system and will define the provided cppfront targets if found. To use, copy the file into your project's cmake/ directory. In your toplevel CMakeLists.txt, add the CMake directory to your module search path using

list( APPEND CMAKE_MODULE_PATH "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/cmake" )

Then call find_package:

find_package( cppfront MODULE )
# Use this one if cppfront is required.
# find_package( cppfront MODULE REQUIRED )

This should work out of the box.