Premake

Warning

This feature is experimental and subject to breaking changes. See the Conan stability section for more information.

The Premake build helper is a wrapper around the command line invocation of Premake. It will abstract the project configuration and build command.

The helper is intended to be used in the conanfile.py build() method, to call Premake commands automatically when a package is being built directly by Conan (create, install)

Usage Example:

from conan.tools.premake import Premake

class Pkg(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "compiler", "build_type", "arch"

    # The PremakeToolchain generator is always needed to use premake helper
    generators = "PremakeToolchain"

    def build(self):
        p = Premake(self)

        # Set the main Lua configuration file (default: premake5.lua)
        p.luafile = "myproject.lua"

        # Pass custom arguments to Premake (translates to --{key}={value})
        p.arguments["myarg"] = "myvalue"

        # Automatically determines the correct action:
        # - For MSVC, selects vs<version> based on the compiler version
        # - Defaults to "gmake" for other compilers
        # p.configure() will run: premake5 --file=myproject.lua <action> --{key}={value} ...
        p.configure()
        # p.build() will invoke proper compiler depending on action (automatically detected by profile)
        p.build("HelloWorld.sln")

Reference

class Premake(conanfile)

This class calls Premake commands when a package is being built. Notice that this one should be used together with the PremakeToolchain generator.

This premake generator is only compatible with premake5.

Parameters:

conanfile – < ConanFile object > The current recipe object. Always use self.

luafile

Path to the root premake5 lua file (default is premake5.lua)

arguments

Key value pairs. Will translate to “–{key}={value}”

configure()

Runs premake5 <action> [FILE] which will generate respective build scripts depending on the action.

build(workspace, targets=None, configuration=None, msbuild_platform=None)

Depending on the action, this method will run either msbuild or make with N_JOBS. You can specify N_JOBS through the configuration line tools.build:jobs=N_JOBS in your profile [conf] section.

Parameters:

• workspace – str Specifies the solution to be compiled (only used by MSBuild).

• targets – List[str] Declare the projects to be built (None to build all projects).

• configuration – str Specify the configuration build type, default to build_type (“Release” or “Debug”), but this allow setting custom configuration type.

• msbuild_platform – str Specify the platform for the internal MSBuild generator (only used by MSBuild).

conf

The Premake build helper is affected by these [conf] variables:

• tools.build:verbosity which accepts one of quiet or verbose and sets the --quiet flag in Premake.configure()

• tools.compilation:verbosity which accepts one of quiet or verbose and sets the --verbose flag in Premake.build()

Extra configuration

By default, typical Premake configurations are Release and Debug. This configurations could vary depending on the used Premake script.

For example,

workspace "MyProject"
    configurations { "Debug", "Release", "DebugDLL", "ReleaseDLL" }

If you wish to use a different configuration than Release or Debug, you can override the configuration from the Premake generator.

If the project also have dependencies, you will also need to override the configuration property of the PremakeDeps generator accordingly, with the same value.

class MyRecipe(Conanfile):
    ...
    def _premake_configuration(self):
        return str(self.settings.build_type) + ("DLL" if self.options.shared else "")

    def generate(self):
        deps = PremakeDeps(self)
        deps.configuration = self._premake_configuration
        deps.generate()
        tc = PremakeToolchain(self)
        tc.generate()

    def build(self):
        premake = Premake(self)
        premake.configure()
        premake.build(workspace="MyProject", configuration=self._premake_configuration)