Incubating features

This section is dedicated to new features that are under development, looking for user testing and feedback. They are generally behind a flag to enable them to be explicitly opted-in at this testing stage. They require the very latest Conan version (sometimes recommended running from the develop2 source branch), and explicitly setting those flags.

New CMakeConfigDeps generator

This generator is designed as a replacement of the current CMakeDeps generator, with multiple pending fixes and improvements that couldn’t easily be done in the current one without breaking:

  • Creates real SHARED/STATIC/INTERFACE IMPORTED targets, no more artificial interface targets. The CONAN_LIB:: and other similar targets do not exist anymore.

  • Defines IMPORTED_CONFIGURATIONS for targets.

  • CONFIG definition of dependencies matching the dependency Release/Debug/etc build_type, no longer using the consumer one.

  • Definition of IMPORTED_LOCATION and IMPORTED_IMPLIB for library targets.

  • Definition of LINK_LANGUAGES based on the recipe languages and cpp_info/component languages properties.

  • All these allows better propagation of linkage requirement and visibility, avoiding some linkage error of transitive shared libraries in Linux.

  • Better definition of requires relationships across components inside the same package and with respect to other packages.

  • It doesn’t need any build_context_activated or build_context_suffix to use tool_requires dependencies.

  • Definition of cpp_info/component.exe information (should include the .location definition too), to define EXECUTABLE targets that can be run.

  • Executables from requires can also be used in non cross-build scenarios. When a tool_requires to the same depependency exists, then those executables will have priority.

  • Creation of a new conan_cmakedeps_paths.cmake that contains definitions of <pkg>_DIR paths for direct finding of the dependencies. This file is also planned to be used in cmake-conan to extend its usage and avoid some current limitations due to the fact that a CMake driven installation cannot inject a toolchain later.

  • (new since Conan 2.14) Better management of the system OSX Frameworks through cpp_info.frameworks.

  • (new since Conan 2.14) Definition of cpp_info/component.package_framework information (should include the .location definition too, e.g., os.path.join(self.package_folder, "MyFramework.framework", "MyFramework")) to define the custom OSX Framework library to be linked against.

Note

This generator is only intended to generate config.cmake config files, it will not generate Find*.cmake find modules, and support for it is not planned. Use the CMakeDeps generator for that.

The new fields that can be defined in the cpp_info or cpp_info.components, besides the already defined in CppInfo are:

# EXPERIMENTAL FIELDS, used exclusively by new CMakeConfigDeps (-c tools.cmake.cmakedeps:new)
self.cpp_info.type  # The type of this artifact "shared-library", "static-library", etc (same as package_type)
self.cpp_info.location # full location (path and filename with extension) of the artifact or the Apple Framework library one
self.cpp_info.link_location  # Location of the import library for Windows .lib associated to a dll
self.cpp_info.languages # same as "languages" attribute, it can be "C", "C++"
self.cpp_info.exe  # Definition of an executable artifact
self.cpp_info.package_framework  # Definition of an Apple Framework (new since Conan 2.14)
self.cpp_info.sources  # List of paths to source files in the package (for packages that provide source code to consumers)

These fields will be auto-deduced from the other cpp_info and components definitions, like the libs or libdirs fields, but the automatic deduction might have limitations. Defining them explicitly will inhibit the auto deduction and use the value as provided by the recipe.

Declare sources for targets with:

self.cpp_info.sources = ["src/mylib.cpp", "src/other.cpp"]

This allows packages to provide source code as a dependency to consumers. The paths should be relative to the package folder. The source files will be added as INTERFACE_SOURCES property to the CMake library (or component) target and consumers that link with this target will compile the sources when building their own targets.

This feature is enabled with the -c tools.cmake.cmakedeps:new=will_break_next configuration. The value will_break_next will change in next releases to emphasize the fact that this feature is not suitable for usage beyond testing. Just by enabling this conf and forcing the build of packages that use CMakeDeps will trigger the usage of the new generator.

This new generator will also be usable in conanfile files with:

conanfile.txt
[generators]
CMakeConfigDeps
conanfile.py
class Pkg(ConanFile):
   generators = "CMakeConfigDeps"

Or:

conanfile.py
from conan import ConanFile
from conan.tools.cmake import CMakeConfigDeps

class TestConan(ConanFile):

   def generate(self):
      deps = CMakeConfigDeps(self)
      deps.generate()

The -c tools.cmake.cmakedeps:new=will_break_next is still necessary for this recipe CMakeConfigDeps usage, if the config is not enabled, those recipes will fail. It is also possible to define -c tools.cmake.cmakedeps:new=recipe_will_break to enable exclusively the CMakeConfigDeps generators usages, but not the automatic replacement of existing CMakeDeps by the CMakeConfigDeps.

Note that the feature is still “incubating”, even for the explicit CMakeConfigDeps generator syntax, this recipe is subject to break or be removed at any time.

For any feedback, please open new tickets in https://github.com/conan-io/conan/issues. This feedback is very important to stabilize the feature and get it out of incubating, so even if it worked fine and you found no issue, having the positive feedback reported is very useful.

Workspaces

Moved to Workspaces

Workspace files syntax

Moved to Workspace files

Workspace commands

Moved to conan workspace

Workspace monolithic builds

Moved to Monolithic build

For any feedback, please open new tickets in https://github.com/conan-io/conan/issues.