Makefile equivalent in CMake

Question

I have just started using CMake and it has been less than a week. I have a Makefile written and I am trying to write its equivalent in CMake. I don't have an idea about the commands that I should use in CMake for each of the statements in the given Makefile. How do I get started? Is there some place I can find documentation for this?

Answer 1

You should really subscribe to CMake mailling list (here) and look at their website in the "help" section, it's great!

If you don't find the answer to your question with some google research, or looking at the mailing list archive (here), then just mail it to the mailing list and nice people will help you!

That's what I did about 2 month ago and now I've got a nice project compiling with cmake! :)

Answer 2

I just converted my project (~15000 lines of C++ code, builds shared libraries, unit tests, and executables) to CMake from scons a couple of weeks ago, and it only took a day or two to do.

One thing I found helpful was that the Boost project now has experimental support for CMake rather than bjam. Looking through their code (specifically, the macros defined in tools/build/CMake) taught me a lot about some of the syntax and capabilities of CMake.

Also useful:

• The official CMake FAQ
• The online CMake documentation
• A simple CMake tutorial
• A quick overview of the language/syntax

Hope this helps.