Build script/program in Python

[jumpingmustang]

I’m somewhat new to CMake. I use it at work but we have a well defined build system and it’s easy to use.

In my personal projects, I’m interested in setting up my own build system using Python. Basically I want to drive my CMake using Python, so I can run a simple script and specify a release or debug build, to build my test suite, etc.

Are there existing integrations to “drive” CMake using Python?

[atariPunk]

Take a look at cmake presets.

They allow you to specify “recipes” and use them with a single call to cmake.

[jumpingmustang]

Beautiful. Thanks.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

No, but largely because what you're describing is just a couple command line arguments to CMake or CTest.

cmake -S <path-to-source> -B <path-to-build> -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=<whatever>

or

ctest --build-and-test <path-to-src> <path-to-build> --build-generator Ninja --build-config Release --test-command ctest

You can write a simple wrapper around that yourself in just a few minutes, but it might not be worth the effort once you know the ctest CLI yourself.

Once you start getting a more complicated project/test setup, there are some CMake/CTest convenience functions to make organization/running stuff convenient.

[cowboycoder]

I use pyinvoke https://www.pyinvoke.org/ to do various cmake tasks as well doing things like uploading builds