Adding a CMake project to a Visual Studio solution

Question

I am working on a Visual Studio 2013 project and would like to link it to a library that uses CMake to generate a build configuration. For example:

project
|-> src
    |-> project.sln
|-> dep
    |-> library
        |-> src
            |-> CMakeLists.txt

Is there a way to configure, build, and link my library to my project when I build the project in Visual Studio?

I would like to eventually make the whole project a CMake project and generate a comprehensive Visual Studio solution, but it is currently quite large and complicated. With limited time, I'm wondering what my best option is. Is there a clean way to do this with VS Custom Build commands?

Answer 1

Here is most simplified version of CMake's configuration and build steps.

Just create a Configuration Type / Utility project in the same folder as your CMakeLists.txt and add:

• Pre-Build Event / Command Line

   IF NOT EXIST "bin\\*.sln" ( cmake -H"." -B"bin" ) 

  or for newer versions of CMake

   IF NOT EXIST "bin\\*.sln" ( cmake -H"." -B"bin" -DCMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM:PATH="$(DevEnvDir)\\devenv.exe" ) 

  Just because I personally don't like it to use msbuild.exe (which would be the default).

• Post-Build Event / Command Line

   cmake --build "bin" --config "$(Configuration)" 

Alternative

You can also create a root CMakeLists.txt importing existing .vcproj files via include_external_msproject() commands:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.6)

project(project)

include_external_msproject(${PROJECT_NAME} src/${PROJECT_NAME}.vcxproj)
...
add_subdirectory(dep/library/src library)

Reference

• How to know whether the cmake project generation ended with success
• MSBuild.exe has stopped cmake error