Collect all header files when compiling static library

Question

I am using Cmake to compile a static version of the library from source.

The source code has a structure that looks like this:

src/ 
   module1/
       x.cpp
       x.h
       ... 
   module2/
       y.cpp
       y.h
       ...

and so on...

Compiling a static version of the library is not difficult. However for distribution purposes, I just want to distribute the the headers ( xh, yh, ... ) and static libraries ( module1.a, module2.a, ... ).

Is there some command in GCC or CMAKE to automatically collect all of the headers and put them into a separate folder?

I am aware that I could manually separate the source and headers, or I could simply distribute all of the code (source and headers), but that is wasteful and undesireable for my particular use case. Alternatively, I could write a pretty simple Python script to do it, but it seems to me that this is probably a pretty common scenario. So I would guess that there is something in Gcc or Cmake to do it.

Note: I am not in charge of maintaining the codebase, so I have no say in how the project is structured. If I was, I could have separated the code into src and include folders.

Answer 1

The best thing to do is have cmake glob and install all your artifacts.

# append to your existing CMakeLists.txt
install(TARGETS module1 module2 #adjust to use your names
        ARCHIVE DESTINATION lib)
file(GLOB_RECURSE header_list "*.h") #adjust if necessary
install(FILES ${header_list}
        DESTINATION include)

Be aware that globbing isn't perfect, and the file list is only updated when cmake is run (ie, it won't detect added or removed files on its own).