[CMake] Creating OSX bundles with CMake (without Xcode)

[David Cole]

Also, if it's a Qt app, look into the relatively new (in 2.8.7 and later, I
think) module "DeployQt4" [
http://cmake.org/cmake/help/v2.8.9/cmake.html#module:DeployQt4 ] which is
based on BundleUtilities.

Here's a blog post about using it:
http://mikemcquaid.com/2012/01/04/deploying-qt-applications-with-deployqt4/


HTH,
David


On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 7:29 AM, Michael Jackson <mike.jackson at bluequartz.net
> wrote:

> Look into "BundleUtilities" and the add_executable with MACOSX_BUNDLE
> argument. BundleUtilities implicitly relies on the .app bundle structure
> already being in place. I have a Shell script that runs before
> BundleUtilities to setup some additional resource movement (icons,
> qt.conf...).  I do all this from "Makefiles" generated for either Eclipse
> or QtCreator.
> ___________________________________________________________
> Mike Jackson                    Principal Software Engineer
> BlueQuartz Software                            Dayton, Ohio
> mike.jackson at bluequartz.net              www.bluequartz.net
>
> On Oct 1, 2012, at 5:16 AM, Jonatan Magnusson wrote:
>
> > Hi
> >
> > I'm a new OSX developer with many years of experience developing
> > applications using Emacs and Makefiles and I'm not happy about
> > resorting to Xcode on OSX. So I'm trying to compile and create OSX
> > bundles using CMake. Getting the application I'm currently working on
> > to build was no problem - it required just a few tweaks, since I have
> > happily used CMake to build on Linux for years.
> >
> > But I'm not sure how to handle bundle creation!
> >
> > I have two uses for bundles - first I have to create a bundle for
> > running the application during development, and second I have to
> > create a bundle for distribution. They could probably be the same, but
> > I'm mostly concerned about the first for now. So my problem is not
> > including library dependencies in the bundle, but rather to include
> > the application libraries, executables, plugins and resources for
> > testing the application after each code change.
> >
> > There are a lot of alternatives to do this it seems: using
> > MACOSX_BUNDLE for the add_executable function call, using CPack or
> > creating the directory structure "by hand".
> >
> > So, my directory structure looks something like this:
> >
> > /plugins/plugin-A - Code for plugin A (shared library)
> > /plugins/plugin-B - Code for plugin B (shared library)
> > /libapp           - Application logic code
> > /ui               - User interface code (contains the main() function)
> > /data/pictures    - Picture resources
> > /data/settings    - XML-files etc
> >
> > I have a root CMakeLists.txt that just declares the top project, sets
> > some variables and calls add_subdirectory() for each subdirectory
> > (plugins, libapp, ui, data).
> >
> > The "plugin" and "libapp" subdirectories contains CMakeLists.txt that
> > create (shared and static) libraries.
> >
> > The "ui" subdirectory contains the add_executable() function call that
> > builds the executable and links to "libapp".
> >
> > Also, each directory has a CMakeLists.txt that contains installation
> > instructions for standard unix installation.
> >
> > Now, the easiest way to create a bundle is to add MACOSX_BUNDLE to
> > add_executable in "ui". This creates a new bundle "/ui/ui.app" that
> > contains an Info.plist and the executable. But I must also add plugins
> > and resources to this bundle before I'm able to run it. What's the
> > best way to handle this? I don't like the idea that it is the
> > add_executable-function that creates the bundle - the bundle should be
> > for the entire project, not just that executable.
> >
> > Since each subdirectory include an install() function call the
> > information about what to put in the bundle is more or less there
> > already: the same files should be put in the bundle as would be
> > installed on other Unix-systems (but in a different directory
> > structure).
> >
> > I've played around with setting LIBRARY_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY to
> > "/theapp.app/Contents/PlugIns" for each plugin and similar for the
> > executable, and it kinda works, but it feels hackish. And I'm not sure
> > how to add resources in the same way. And Info.plist is not created
> > automatically, so I have to create it myself or perhaps set the output
> > path of the bundle created by MACOSX_BUNDLE to the same path …
> >
> > Best practices? Is there even anyone doing it this way, or is everyone
> > using Xcode?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Jonatan Magnusson
> >
> > (I've sent this mail before, last week, but it never got out on the
> > mailing list, so I'm sending again. Sorry about any duplicates.)
> > --
> >
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