cmake-superbuild

CMake SuperBuild template using External_Projects

How does it work?

The top-level CMakeLists.txt works in a has 2 stages:

1. USE_SUPERBUILD=ON [the default]: Deleguates the generation to SuperBuild.cmake which will download and build the dependencies and then re-invoke the top-level CMakeLists.txt but this time with USE_SUPERBUILD set to OFF.

2. This step, when USE_SUPERBUILD=OFF, is the usual CMakeLists of the project, in a SuperBuild mode this will reside in the subdirectory blah of the SuperBuild directory.

Example using with the default method USE_SUPERBUILD=ON:

$ mkdir super-build && cd super-build
$ cmake ..
$ # assuming the Unix Makefile generator was the default
$ make
<download and build dependencies...>
<build main project "blah"...>
$ # the project build directory is resides in blah/
$ cd blah/
$ pwd
<...>/cmake-superbuild/build/blah
$ ./bin/blah
Hello World!

Example without the superbuild, the dependencies are taken care in some other ways:

$ mkdir build && cd build
$ # assuming a proper version of Boost has been built and resides
$ # in ~/pkg/boost_1_55_0
$ cmake -DUSE_SUPERBUILD=OFF -DBOOST_ROOT=~/pkg/boost_1_55_0 ..
$ make
$ ./bin/blah
Hello World!