How to make a lib before making the program in CMAKE?

Question

I would like to be able to dynamically compile a library that will be used by my project before compiling my project.

I am setting up a Vulkan project in C++ (with Clion) and would like it to be multi-platforms, I am using GLFW3.3 to make that happen.

Instead of building my library for each platform and putting the libs and .h in a folder that will be linked through the CMakeLists.txt, I would like to be able to CMAKE+make the library, then put the lib and .h where they need to be and then start compiling my program that will be using those.

GLFW has a working CMakeLists.txt (I manage to make it manually through the console) but I don't know how to tell CMAKE to make it etc.

I am used to using CMake to define path to libs and includes but my last project what also multi-platforms and I didn't like the way I handled the library (build manually etc). So I am looking for a way in CMake to do everything at once even if it will take time to do so but I have no idea how that works.

Answer 1

Take a look at how Glitter does it:

option(GLFW_BUILD_DOCS OFF)
option(GLFW_BUILD_EXAMPLES OFF)
option(GLFW_BUILD_TESTS OFF)
add_subdirectory(Glitter/Vendor/glfw)

target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} ... glfw)

They just include the CMakeLists.txt file that GLFW provides and depend on it for the main target.