CMake install project doesn't copy my executable to the folder I specify

Question

I am just starting out with CMake. I\'ve successfully set up the most minimal Hello, World! C++ application possible for Visual Studio 2012 on Windows 7,

Answer 1

This probably just boils down to being a typo. In the last line of source/helloWorld/CMakeLists.txt I guess you meant PROJECT_BINARY_DIR rather than PROJECT_BINARY_BIN?

What's happening here is that ${PROJECT_BINARY_BIN}/bin resolves to /bin (dereferencing an undefined string in CMake unfortunately doesn't generate a warning) and /bin is an absolute path. If your project is in the C: drive, I expect you'll find that C:\bin\helloWorld.exe actually does exist: Visual Studio hasn't been lying to you :-)

Just as an aside, it's usual to specify relative paths in the install command to allow the user to select the install root. Likewise, it's not really user-friendly to hard code the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX (at least without a warning).

In this case, I'd change the install command to:

install (TARGETS helloWorld RUNTIME DESTINATION bin)

and remove set(CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX ...) from source/CMakeLists.txt.

Say your project's root is C:\myProject, then from a Visual Studio command prompt, you can do:

cd C:\myProject\build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="C:\myProject\build" ..\source
cmake --build . --config Release --target INSTALL
bin\helloWorld.exe