[CMake] Help on first cmake project

[Florian Lindner]

Hello,

coming from scons I want to take a look into cmake...

My CMakeList.txt looks like:


cmake_minimum_required (VERSION 3.0)
project (ASTE)

add_executable(readMesh readMesh.cpp)

find_library(precice precice PATHS $ENV{PRECICE_ROOT}/build/last)
target_link_libraries(readMesh ${precice})
set(CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH ${CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH} $ENV{PRECICE_ROOT}/build/last)


find_package(Boost 1.60.0
  COMPONENTS program_options filesystem
  REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(readMesh ${Boost_LIBRARIES})

find_package(MPI REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(readMesh ${MPI_LIBRARIES})
set(COMPILE_FLAGS  ${COMPILE_FLAGS} ${MPI_COMPILE_FLAGS})
set(LINK_FLAGS ${LINK_FLAGS} ${MPI_LINK_FLAGS})


and does it job, i.e. the target builds. precice is out own, independently build library.

However, I have several questions:

* Can I make target_link_libraries add a library for all defined targets? At the moment, there is only one, but in the
projekt there are multiple, very similiar targets built.

* Can I make find_library to treat the library as required, as with find_package?

* Can I reused the value of find_library's PATH setting? Especially if there are multiple PATHs, wouldn't it be nice to
have a precice-LIBPATH that contains the path, where the library was found? So I can add this to CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH? Or
is there another function that does all that?

* Is there a way to clean cmake cache, other than rm -rf CMakeFiles CMakeCache.txt. Would be nice, when playing around
and frequently changing the CMakeLists.txt

* I am a bit suprised that finding/or not finding MPI or precice is not printed out when executing cmake.

* Any other advises you want to give me?

Thanks for helping a beginner!

Florian