Cake for CMake

Cake is a lightweight project and package management system for CMake, implemented in CMake scripts which can be used from the command-line or from your CMakeList.txt. Features:

• Provides a (very simple) project file to manage and organize your CMake projects and directories, something like Maven
• Provides tool to manage multiple repositories (a bit like Google's repo-tool)
• Clone, build and install dependencies in configuration time, retrieve dependencies recursively
• Supports both external dependencies (built in their own build trees) and subprojects (add_subdirectory).
• Requires minimal change in your projects, supports legacy CMake dependencies (zero change).
• Supports optional dependencies (like a --with-sqlite option)

For a complex case study see: https://github.com/tamaskenez/mapbox-gl-native-cmake-builder

---- below this UNDER CONSTRUCTION ----

Project Management

Package Management

As a quick demonstration the CMakeLists.txt of a project using libpng looks like this:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.1)
project(pngtest)

include(${CAKE_ROOT}/Cake.cmake)

cake_find_package(PNG REQUIRED URL git://git.code.sf.net/p/libpng/code) # the official libpng repo

include_directories(${PNG_INCLUDE_DIRS})
add_definitions(${PNG_DEFINITIONS})
add_executable(pngtest main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(pngtest ${PNG_LIBRARIES})

The cake_find_package() macro clones, builds and installs libpng and its dependency, zlib, in configure time and calls find_package(PNG).

For a package management tutorial please see the article: cake-package-management-tutorial. For reference see the help in the files in this directory: /Modules and also the /samples.

The cake shell command

The cake is a shell command (implemented in a CMake script) which you can use in place of calling cmake directly. The main purpose of cake is to save typing and perform common operations more conveniently. Examples:

• cake .: runs cmake for the current directory as source-dir, with other parameters like binary-dir location, cmake-generator read from environment variables or a config file.
• cake . -R -n: runs cmake for the current directory then builds the install target for Debug and Release configurations.
• cake . --ide: opens the IDE (XCode or Visual Studio) for the current dir.

For more information about the cake command please see this tutorial: cake-tutorial and the help in the file /cake-src/cake.cmake.