How to create a shared library with cmake?

Question

I have written a library that I used to compile using a self-written Makefile, but now I want to switch to cmake. The tree looks like this (I removed all the irrelevant file

Answer 1

First, this is the directory layout that I am using:

.
├── include
│   ├── class1.hpp
│   ├── ...
│   └── class2.hpp
└── src
    ├── class1.cpp
    ├── ...
    └── class2.cpp

After a couple of days taking a look into this, this is my favourite way of doing this thanks to modern CMake:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5)
project(mylib VERSION 1.0.0 LANGUAGES CXX)

set(DEFAULT_BUILD_TYPE "Release")

if(NOT CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE AND NOT CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES)
  message(STATUS "Setting build type to '${DEFAULT_BUILD_TYPE}' as none was specified.")
  set(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE "${DEFAULT_BUILD_TYPE}" CACHE STRING "Choose the type of build." FORCE)
  # Set the possible values of build type for cmake-gui
  set_property(CACHE CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE PROPERTY STRINGS "Debug" "Release" "MinSizeRel" "RelWithDebInfo")
endif()

include(GNUInstallDirs)

set(SOURCE_FILES src/class1.cpp src/class2.cpp)

add_library(${PROJECT_NAME} ...)

target_include_directories(${PROJECT_NAME} PUBLIC
    $
    $
    PRIVATE src)

set_target_properties(${PROJECT_NAME} PROPERTIES
    VERSION ${PROJECT_VERSION}
    SOVERSION 1)

install(TARGETS ${PROJECT_NAME} EXPORT MyLibConfig
    ARCHIVE  DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR}
    LIBRARY  DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR}
    RUNTIME  DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_BINDIR})
install(DIRECTORY include/ DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_INCLUDEDIR}/${PROJECT_NAME})

install(EXPORT MyLibConfig DESTINATION share/MyLib/cmake)

export(TARGETS ${PROJECT_NAME} FILE MyLibConfig.cmake)

After running CMake and installing the library, there is no need to use Find***.cmake files, it can be used like this:

find_package(MyLib REQUIRED)

#No need to perform include_directories(...)
target_link_libraries(${TARGET} mylib)

That's it, if it has been installed in a standard directory it will be found and there is no need to do anything else. If it has been installed in a non-standard path, it is also easy, just tell CMake where to find MyLibConfig.cmake using:

cmake -DMyLib_DIR=/non/standard/install/path ..

I hope this helps everybody as much as it has helped me. Old ways of doing this were quite cumbersome.