[CMake] Running "install" by default, or alternatives?

[Paul Smith]

No love for this question apparently :-/

I tried to implement the suggestion in the mailing list post below, and
it works fine with UNIX makefiles.

But, on other generators such as Xcode and MSVC there's a major problem
that I don't know how to solve.  The post suggests forcing a new target
like this:

  add_custom_target(stage_install ALL
      COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -P "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/cmake_install.cmake")

which is fine for generators that don't use build types.  However for
generators that do use build types, I don't know how to pass the build
type into the cmake command.

I found that cmake_install.cmake is reading ${BUILD_TYPE}, so I can add
-DBUILD_TYPE=... to the $(CMAKE_COMMAND} in the stage_install target
above if I can figure out what "..." should be.

So when I run, for example, "xcodebuild build -configuration Debug", how
do I write that custom target command so it can find the configuration
name "Debug" that xcodebuild was invoked with?


Basically all I can do now is hardcode the build type at cmake time, so
if you want to use a different build type you must re-run cmake with a
different -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE= flag :-/.



On Fri, 2013-05-24 at 11:41 -0400, Paul Smith wrote:
> Hi all;
> 
> We have a large-ish set of cmake files building our project which
> results in various executables, libraries, scripts, etc.  Currently
> these are just left lying where they were created, and all our tests
> etc. expect to find them there.
> 
> Then we then have a subsequent script that we run to collect the build
> products into a temporary staging area and create the installation
> packages (RPMs, EXEs, etc.)  Then to run our tests on the packages we
> have to put them in a mode where they expect to find things in those
> "release" locations instead of the "build" location.
> 
> This is annoying for many reasons and I want to change it so that the
> build installs into the staging area, which has the same layout as the
> package installation, then all our tests will use that layout and our
> packager can just package up that staging area with little extra work.
> I guess that the "install" capabilities of CMake are the right way to go
> about it.
> 
> 
> One major concern I have is that everyone has scripts, macros, etc.
> which just run "make", or use XCode or MSVC with the default target.  If
> I make this change, then when people forget and run the default target
> instead of the "install" target they'll be running against the results
> of a previous build (when they did run the "install" step), not the
> results of the current build (where they forgot to run the "install"
> step).  Much confusion and swearing will ensue.
> 
> It doesn't take hardly any time to do the extra few file copies, so I
> just want to ALWAYS install to the staging area after building.
> 
> Is there a way to make it so that the "install" step is the default step
> selected if you don't provide a different one?
> 
> Or is CMake install capability not the right answer for this problem?
> 
> Or, is a solution like this one:
> 
> http://marc.info/?l=cmake&m=130365717914933&w=2
> 
> still the recommended way to handle a situation like this?  Are there
> more "official" solutions available?
> 
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