To get the most out of this book, we recommend that you run the examples locally. To do this you will need the following:

• A Windows, Mac, or Linux machine with an up-to-date operating system (OS)
• A working C/C++ compiler (a system default is recommended for each platform if you don’t already have this)

The code examples in this chapter can be found by following this link: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Minimal-CMake.

CMake version

All examples in this book have been tested with CMake 3.28.1. Earlier versions are not guaranteed to work. Later versions should be safe to upgrade to, though it’s possible that there may be differences. If in doubt, use CMake 3.28.1 when running the examples from this book.

In this section, we’ll cover how to install everything you’ll need to start building applications with CMake on Windows.

To begin with, you will need a C/C++ compiler. If you don’t already have a compiler installed, a good choice to go with is Visual Studio (Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition can be downloaded from https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/).

Visual Studio is an integrated development environment that comes with Microsoft’s C++ compiler for Windows (cl.exe). We won’t be covering Visual Studio directly, though you are more than welcome to use it if you prefer (see Chapter 11, Supporting Tools and Next Steps for a brief summary). We’ll cover how to generate Visual Studio solution files and invoke MSBuild to build our project. To keep things as consistent as possible, we’ll use Visual Studio Code for most of the examples. This is more for convenience than anything else, and if you...

In this section, we’ll cover how to install everything you’ll need to start building the application on macOS.

To begin, you will need a C/C++ compiler. If you don’t already have a compiler installed, the safest bet is to go with Xcode, which can be downloaded from the App Store:

1. Go to Spotlight Search by clicking the magnifying glass on the macOS menu bar.

Figure 1.10: Spotlight Search option on macOS menu bar

2. Search for App Store.

Figure 1.11: Searching for App Store from Spotlight Search

3. From App Store, search for Xcode.

Figure 1.12: Xcode search results from the App Store

4. Click the Get and then Install buttons.

Figure 1.13: Xcode application install

It is also possible to install Command Line Tools for Xcode from https://developer.apple.com, specifically https://developer...

In this section, we’ll cover how to get everything you’ll need to start building the application on Linux (Ubuntu).

To begin with, you will need a C/C++ compiler. If you don’t already have a compiler installed, an excellent choice is to go with GCC. This can be installed by using the standard Ubuntu package manager, apt:

1. Open Terminal by using Show Applications from the desktop.

Figure 1.21: Ubuntu Show Applications menu option

2. Run sudo apt update and then sudo apt install build-essential (it is possible that your version of Ubuntu already comes with this installed, but it’s good to check).

Figure 1.22: Installing build-essential from Terminal

3. Run gcc --version to verify that the compiler can be found and is working as expected. You should see output resembling the following:

gcc (Ubuntu 11.4.0-1ubuntu1~22.04) 11.4.0 ...

To follow the examples provided in each chapter and retrieve the accompanying source code for this book (available from the book’s website https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Minimal-CMake), it is recommended to have Git installed on your system.

The easiest way to do this is to go to https://git-scm.com/downloads and download Git for your chosen platform if you do not already have it installed.

On macOS, Git is installed as part of the Xcode installation we walked through in Installing CMake on macOS. On Windows, download the 64-bit installer and run the installation. On Linux (Ubuntu), run sudo apt-get install git from the terminal.

Type git from the command line to verify that the tool is available.

To ensure a consistent experience throughout the book, Visual Studio Code will be used along with the native terminal to walk through code examples, be that on Windows, macOS, or Linux. The following section outlines how to get set up with Visual Studio Code and configure your development environment. If you would prefer to use a different editor, that’s fine. All that is needed to follow along is a C/C++ compiler and CMake. Visual Studio Code is simply used as a cross-platform editor (it also comes with some excellent CMake support that is covered in Chapter 11, Supporting Tools and Next Steps).

To install Visual Studio Code, go to https://code.visualstudio.com/Download. There are links for Windows, Linux, and macOS there. Follow the installation instructions for your platform of choice. On Windows, choose User Installer and follow the setup instructions.

On Linux, either download the .deb package and use the Software Install application...

In this chapter, we walked through everything you need to begin development with CMake. We installed a C/C++ compiler on Windows, macOS, and Linux and installed CMake on each platform. We saw how to install Git and walked through how to install Visual Studio Code and enable several useful extensions. Having our environment configured correctly is important to ensure that the later examples we’ll work through behave as expected. We now have everything we need to start using CMake and can start developing our project to understand how CMake can accelerate how we build software.

In the next chapter, we will introduce CMake and look at the commands you will commonly run from the terminal. We’ll also look at some of the core commands that make up a CMake script. We’ll get a basic application up and running and learn about generators, build types, and more.