alt Hacker NewsYesterday I had to wrestle with CMake.
But how this tool figures out where the header files and build instructions for the libraries are that are included? Any expected layout or industry wide consensus?
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I suspect it depends on a specific directory structure, e.g. look at this generated cmake file:
https://github.com/randerson112/craft/blob/main/CMakeLists.t...
...and for custom requirements a manually created CMakeLists.extras.txt as escape hatch.
Unclear to me how more interesting scenarios like compiler- and platform-specific build options (enable/disable warnings, defines, etc...), cross-compilation via cmake toolchain files (e.g. via Emscripten SDK, WASI SDK or Android SDK/NDK) would be handled. E.g. just trivial things like "when compiling for Emscripten, include these source files, but not those others".
CMakes piles up various generations of idioms so there are multiple ways of doing it, but personally I’ve learned to steer away from find_package() and other magical functions. Get all your dependencies as subdirectories (whichever way you prefer) and use add_subdirectory(). Use find_package() only in so-called "config" mode where you explicitly instruct cmake where to find the config for large precompiled dependencies only
I believe it supports only projects having a working cmake setup, no extra magic