CMake

Warning

These tools are experimental and subject to breaking changes.

The CMake build helper is a wrapper around the command line invocation of cmake. It will abstract the calls like cmake --build . --config Release into Python method calls. It will also add the argument -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=conan_toolchain.cmake to the configure() call.

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

from conans import ConanFile
from conan.tools.cmake import CMake, CMakeToolchain, CMakeDeps

class App(ConanFile):
    settings = "os", "arch", "compiler", "build_type"
    requires = "hello/0.1"
    options = {"shared": [True, False], "fPIC": [True, False]}
    default_options = {"shared": False, "fPIC": True}

    def generate(self):
        tc = CMakeToolchain(self)
        tc.generate()
        deps = CMakeDeps(self)
        deps.generate()

    def build(self):
        cmake = CMake(self)
        cmake.configure()
        cmake.build()

Note: This helper includes the additional flag -DCMAKE_SH=”CMAKE_SH-NOTFOUND” when using the MinGW Makefiles CMake’s generator, to avoid the error of sh being in the PATH (CMake version < 3.17.0).

It supports the following methods:

constructor

def __init__(self, conanfile, build_folder=None):

conanfile: the current recipe object. Always use self.
build_folder: Relative path to a folder to contain the temporary build files

configure()

def configure(self, source_folder=None):

Calls cmake, with the generator defined in the cmake_generator field of the conanbuild.conf file, and passing -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=conan_toolchain.cmake.

Important

If conanbuild.conf file is not there, Conan will raise an exception because it’s a mandatory one even though it’s empty.

source_folder: Relative path to the folder containing the root CMakeLists.txt

build()

def build(self, build_type=None, target=None):

Calls the build system. Equivalent to cmake --build . in the build folder.

build_type: Use it only to override the value defined in the settings.build_type for a multi-configuration generator (e.g. Visual Studio, XCode). This value will be ignored for single-configuration generators, they will use the one defined in the toolchain file during the install step.
target: name of the build target to run.

install()

def install(self, build_type=None):

Equivalent to run cmake --build . --target=install

build_type: Use it only to override the value defined in the settings.build_type. It can fail if the build is single configuration (e.g. Unix Makefiles), as in that case the build type must be specified at configure time, not build type.

test()

def test(self, build_type=None, target=None, output_on_failure=False):

Equivalent to running cmake --build . --target=RUN_TESTS.

build_type: Use it only to override the value defined in the settings.build_type. It can fail if the build is single configuration (e.g. Unix Makefiles), as in that case the build type must be specified at configure time, not build type.
target: name of the build target to run, by default RUN_TESTS or test.

conf

tools.microsoft.msbuild:verbosity will accept one of "Quiet", "Minimal", "Normal", "Detailed", "Diagnostic" to be passed to the CMake.build() command, when a Visual Studio generator (MSBuild build system) is being used for CMake. It is passed as an argument to the underlying build system via the call cmake --build . --config Release -- /verbosity:Diagnostic
tools.ninja:jobs argument for the --jobs parameter when running Ninja generator. (overrides the general tools.build:processes).
tools.microsoft.msbuild:max_cpu_count argument for the /m (/maxCpuCount) when running MSBuild (overrides the general tools.build:processes).