cmake_logo CMake¶

Conan provides different tools to integrate with CMake in a transparent way. Using these tools, the consuming CMakeLists.txt file does not need to be aware of Conan at all. The CMake tools also provide better IDE integration via cmake-presets.

To learn how to integrate Conan with your current CMake project you can follow the Conan tutorial that uses CMake along all the sections.

Please also check the reference for the CMakeDeps, CMakeToolchain, and CMake tools:

  • CMakeDeps: responsible for generating the CMake config files for all the required dependencies of a package.

  • CMakeConfigDeps: A modern and better alternative to CMakeDeps, released in Conan 2.25 that has several improvements and fixes.

  • CMakeToolchain: generates all the information needed for CMake to build the packages according to the information passed to Conan about things like the operating system, the compiler to use, architecture, etc. in a conan_toolchain.cmake toolchain file. It will also generate cmake-presets files for easy integration with some IDEs that support this CMake feature off-the-shelf.

  • CMake build helper is the tool used by Conan conanfile.py recipes to run CMake and will pass all the arguments that CMake needs to build successfully, such as the toolchain file, build type file, and all the CMake definitions set in the recipe.

The CMakeDeps and CMakeConfigDeps, together with CMakeToolchain follow for the classic consumption flow described along the tutorial and many other sections in this documentation:

$ conan install ...
$ cmake --preset conan-xxxx
# or use the -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=conan_toolchain.cmake

This flow is important, the conan install command generates CMake presets and conan_toolchain.cmake toolchain files that helps locating the dependencies, besides trying to align as best as possible with the profile information. This is the recommended flow for most cases.

In extraordinary and exceptional scenarios, it might be desired for the CMake execution to call conan install to simplify the flow, for example for some IDE integrations like the CLion one, so the users don’t need to call conan install themselves.

For this purpose, the cmake-conan integration exists. It uses the CMake “dependency providers” feature to intercept the first find_package() and do a call to conan install to fetch the dependencies at that point.

This cmake-conan project stability is not guaranteed, and it has some known issues and limitations. Refer to the Github repository for more details. And note that calling conan install explicitly before calling cmake is still the preferred and most recommended flow for most cases.

See also