conan.tools.layout

Warning

These tools are still experimental (so subject to breaking changes) but with very stable syntax. We encourage the usage of it to be prepared for Conan 2.0. The layout() feature will be fully functional only in the new build system integrations (in the conan.tools space). If you are using other integrations, they might not fully support this feature.

Predefined layouts

There are some pre-defined common layouts, ready to be simply used in recipes:

cmake_layout(): a layout for a typical CMake project
vs_layout(): a layout for a typical Visual Studio project
basic_layout(): a very basic layout for a generic project

The predefined layouts define a few things, for example in the cmake_layout() the source folder is called ".", meaning that Conan will expect the sources in the same directory where the conanfile is (most likely the project root, where a CMakeLists.txt file will be typically found). This could be customized without fully changing the layout:

def layout(self):
    cmake_layout(self)
    self.folders.source = "mysrcfolder"

Even if this pre-defined layout doesn’t suit your specific projects layout, checking how they implement their logic shows how you could implement your own logic (and probably put it in a common python_require if you are going to use it in multiple packages).

basic_layout

Usage:

from conan.tools.layout import basic_layout

def layout(self):
    basic_layout(self)

The current layout implementation is very simple, basically sets a different build folder for different build_types and set the generators output folder inside the build folder. This way we avoid to clutter our project while working locally.

def basic_layout(conanfile, src_folder="."):
    conanfile.folders.build = "build"
    if conanfile.settings.get_safe("build_type"):
        conanfile.folders.build += "-{}".format(str(conanfile.settings.build_type).lower())
    conanfile.folders.generators = os.path.join(conanfile.folders.build, "conan")
    conanfile.cpp.build.bindirs = ["."]
    conanfile.cpp.build.libdirs = ["."]
    conanfile.folders.source = src_folder