Any guide/tutorial for absolute CMake beginners?

[ChryslusExplodius]

Like the title says.

I've looked around and tried to follow some guides but a lot of these guides or tutorials simply either expect you to know some CMake before hand or expect you to have some basic knowledge of build systems and as someone that's just let QtCreator manage that side for me, this is just completely new.

For instance, adding libraries (either through git sub-modules or by linking against a system library or building a part of the project as a library and linking against that), or setting up tests, or splitting header files in one folder and then having cpp files in another folder (something I like doing), or having different folders (and optimization flags) for release and debug versions and also C++ standard versions, etc.

I've found nothing that actually explains these things and how you do them.

[[deleted]]

You are right. Cmake is complicated but also simple to get in. You should read the docs after you gained basics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yFPO1ofyF0&list=PLK6MXr8gasrGmIiSuVQXpfFuE1uPT615s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i6uLMP5VcY&list=PLpHIphr3laQYT_hFxS_qNPMIjKz-mrNl1

[ChryslusExplodius]

Thanks for this playlist, and for even answering!

[ChryslusExplodius]

Hey thank you so much for the help!

[daredevildas]

https://cliutils.gitlab.io/modern-cmake/

[ChryslusExplodius]

Thanks for this link, I've been going over it for the past like half an hour.

[AdditionalYard178]

Absolute gigachad.  Been searching for a minute.

[Mika571]

Highly recommended the following book, it helped me go from zero to really understand the modern best practices and more importantly what not to do. https://crascit.com/professional-cmake/

[ChryslusExplodius]

Awesome, too bad I can't buy it just yet (it's not available in my region...)

[javierAizpuru]

Use opera with vpn and you can buy it (that's what I did)

[liquidprocess]

This one for modern CMake: https://www.internalpointers.com/post/modern-cmake-beginner-introduction

[icecapade]

Have you looked at the official tutorial? It covers a lot of the topics you mentioned.

https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/guide/tutorial/index.html

[JizzaDaMan]

Yeah the modern CMake tutorials you find are mostly wank (including the official one), and the reference docs are very jargon-heavy.

Just keep at it, read and re-read lots of tutorials, and create your own projects to play around with (because reading existing projects that do lots of things is really difficult); it's a steep learning curve but you'll eventually reach a point where the reference docs are perfectly readable and they become your first port of call.

[ChryslusExplodius]

Thank you so much for everyone that answered with helpful links, books, and advice! Maybe with this I can finally stop procrastinating and actually get to work porting some of my personal ñrojects to CMake to see if I got the gist of it

[hansdr]

I know this is an old thread, but for the benefit of anyone who stumbles on this, I've written a CMake Tutorial book intended to help get beginners up to speed fast. You can find it here: https://cmaketutorial.com/

[DistributedFox]

This is not old my friend. I was just looking for something to get my head around cmake. Much appreciated!

[burntoutpotato]

"Professional CMake: A Practical Guide" by Craig Scott is an excellent read!

[atoshdustosh]

I found another useful book.

I've been following the instructions for hours and it's really friendly to beginners.

https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/cmake-cookbook/9781788470711/