Understanding CMakeLists

Getting to grips with how CMakeLists.txt files work

CMake

In our introductory tutorial, we used CMake as the build system for our application, but we only really paid close attention to one of our CMakeLists.txt files. Here, we're going to go over how it works in a bit more detail.

CMake is useful because it allows us to automate much of the stuff that needs to be done before compilation.

CMakeLists.txt

You might remember this CMakeLists.txt file from the first tutorial:

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cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)
project(helloworld)

set(KF_MIN_VERSION "5.68.0")
set(QT_MIN_VERSION "5.12.0")

find_package(ECM ${KF_MIN_VERSION} REQUIRED NO_MODULE)

set(CMAKE_MODULE_PATH ${ECM_MODULE_PATH})

include(KDEInstallDirs)
include(KDECMakeSettings)
include(KDECompilerSettings NO_POLICY_SCOPE)

find_package(Qt5 ${QT_MIN_VERSION} REQUIRED NO_MODULE COMPONENTS Core Quick Test Gui QuickControls2 Widgets)
find_package(KF5 ${KF_MIN_VERSION} REQUIRED COMPONENTS Kirigami2 I18n CoreAddons)

set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON)

add_subdirectory(src)

feature_summary(WHAT ALL INCLUDE_QUIET_PACKAGES FATAL_ON_MISSING_REQUIRED_PACKAGES)

The first line, project(helloworld) defines the name of the project.

After that, we set the versions of our needed tools. cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16) sets the version of CMake we will be calling. We then use set() to define variables (KF5_MIN_VERSION and QT_MIN_VERSION) containing the versions of KDE Frameworks and Qt.

Then we get to a section where we include a number of necessary CMake and KDE settings by using extra-cmake-modules. You shouldn't worry too much about these lines for now and we won't need to change them in this tutorial.

The following section is important, because it specifies which dependencies we'll be bringing in at compile time. Let's look at the first line:

find_package(KF5 ${KF5_MIN_VERSION} COMPONENTS Kirigami2 I18n CoreAddons WidgetsAddons)

find_package() finds and loads the external component.
The first word is the framework (KF5).
Then we are calling the variable with the versions we set in the second line.
COMPONENTS is a parameter that precedes the specific components of the framework we will include.
Each word after COMPONENTS refers to a specific component.

Note

If you are looking to add any components listed in the KDE API documentation to your application, you may check the right sidebar for how to add the component with CMake. For instance, for Kirigami2 , you will find something like find_package(KF5Kirigami2), which with the addition of extra-cmake-modules becomes something like find_package(KF5 COMPONENTS Kirigami2).

Pay close attention to your included components, as omitting ones used in our code will stop our application from compiling.

The final line, add_subdirectory(src), points CMake into the src/ directory.

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add_executable(helloworld main.cpp resources.qrc)
target_link_libraries(helloworld Qt5::Quick Qt5::Qml Qt5::Gui Qt5::QuickControls2 Qt5::Widgets KF5::Kirigami2 KF5::I18n)

Since most of the heavy lifting is done by the first file, this one is a lot shorter.

set() is used to set helloworld_SRCS to main.cpp and resources.qrc (if we decide to create additional C++ files we'll need to add them here too)
add_executable() takes care of naming our executable and grabbing the files needed to create it
target_link_libraries dynamically links the libraries used in our code to our executable.

Note

Note that these libraries should match the components that we included in our previous CMakeLists.txt file - otherwise these components will not be included and our application won't compile.

This setup will be useful when developing most Kirigami apps.

List views

Figuring out main.cpp