Do not Bend - Mohamed Fares Landoulsi's Blog

If you’re learning a compiled language such as C++ you are probably wondering how you would handle a very large project by compiling multiple files at once through the command line.

Here is a very basic example: the superclass Point and its subclass MovablePoint:

$ g++ Point.cpp MovablePoint.cpp mainMovable.cpp -o MovablePoint
                

Imagine you are making a video game and you need to compile +100 classes, it wouldn’t be so fun to write all these classes manually on the command line to compile it. And here’s where CMake shines. This software would automate the compilation and the building process. All you need to do is add CMakeLists.txt to your existing project directory.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0)

set(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE Debug)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++14")
                
project(point)
                
add_executable(
    MovablePoint
    Point.cpp
    MovablePoint.cpp
    mainMovable.cpp
)
                    

MovablePoint: name of the final binary. Type on the command line:

$ cmake .
                

It would generate the necessary makefiles for the system in the current directory, and then we can type:

$ make
                

This command would compile all the .cpp files. Finally, to execute the final binary, type:

$ ./MovablePoint