How to generate CMakeLists.txt?

Question

I need some pointers/advice on how to automatically generate CMakeLists.txt files for CMake. Does anyone know of any existing generators? I\'ve checked the ones listed in the CM

Answer 1

Not sure whether this is a problem original poster faced, but as I see plenty of „just write CMakefile.txt” answers above, let me shortly explain why generating CMakefiles may make sense:

a) I have another build system I am fairly happy with

(and which covers large multiplatform build of big collection of interconnected shared and static libraries, programs, scripting language extensions, and tools, with various internal and external dependencies, quirks and variants)

b) Even if I were to replace it, I would not consider cmake.

I took a look at CMakefiles and I am not happy with the syntax and not happy with the semantics.

c) CLion uses CMakefiles, and Cmakefiles only (and seems somewhat interesting)

So, to give CLion a chance (I love PyCharm, so it's tempting), but to keep using my build system, I would gladly use some tool which would let me implement make generate_cmake and have all necessary CMakefiles generated on the fly according to the current info extracted from my build system. I can gladly feed the tool/script with information which sources and headers my app consists of, which libraries and programs it is expected to build, which -I, -L, -D, etc are expected to be set for which component, etc etc.

Well, of course I would be much happier if JetBrains would allow to provide some direct protocol of feeding the IDE with the information it needs (say, allowed me to provide my own command to compile, to run, and to emit whatever metadata they really need - I suppose they mainly need incdirs and defines to implement on the fly code analysis, and libpaths to setup LD_LIBRARY_PATH for the debugger), without referring to cmake. CMakefiles as protocol are somewhat complicated.