Metabuild工具可同时处理多个交叉构建

Question

I have a mid-sized C++ project that runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, both 32- and 64-bit. On some platforms it has more than one variant (eg Gtk-2 and Gtk-3 variants on Linux). Being mostly a hobby programmer, I don't have resources for dedicated build machines for each platform. So I installed cross-compilers for each one so that all building takes place on my Linux box.

I want to be able to build all ten or so variants with a single command. Right now I achieve this with a quick and dirty Python script that creates a makefile (actually I switched to ninja recently but it's not very relevant I guess). It creates Windows installers, Debian packages and whatnot for each variant. But I want a cleaner solution because my script is not gonna scale well as the project grows.

So my question is: What metabuild tools are able to create a single Makefile (or similar, like a ninja build file) that can handle multiple toolkits (cross-compilers) and custom commands (to create installers etc.)?

I tried CMake (and some others) but it's not obvious to me how to work with multiple toolkits. Most tools seem to create one Makefile per configuration.

Edit: Now, this answer claims that it's not possible. I don't understand why. If I can do it with my 15 minutes python script, I feel like there must be a tool able to do it for me.

Answer 1

You can get this behaviour with CMake, using Toolchains and ExternalProject . Different makefiles will still be created behind the scenes, but that doesn't affect the user or the scalability of the project.

First, you will need to turn your project into a CMake project, with all the ifs and elses needed to build on all the different platforms in the CMakeLists.txt file.

You can create a set of toolchain files eg named <target>.toolchain and your cross build CMakeLists.txt where all the magic is done:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0.2)
project(cross-build-project)
include(ExternalProject)

set(project_dir <path to your CMake project>)
set(targets_dir ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/targets)

function(add_target target_toolchain)
  get_filename_component(target_name ${target_toolchain} NAME_WE)
  ExternalProject_Add(
      ${target_name}
      PREFIX ${targets_dir}/${target_name}
      SOURCE_DIR ${project_dir}
      CMAKE_ARGS -DTOOLCHAIN_FILE=${target_toolchain}
      BINARY_DIR ${targets_dir}/${target_name}
    )
endfunction(add_target)

file(GLOB toolchains "*.toolchain")
foreach(toolchain ${toolchains})
  add_target(${toolchain})
endforeach()

This should provide a platform that can be adjusted to your specific needs and scale well with the project.