cmake-hello-world

This is a simple project to demonstrate how to use CMake for building a cross-platform C++ project.

It contains a couple of functions (sqrt and factorial) and their respective unit tests (using doctest).

Prerequisites

• CMake (version 3.15 or higher)
• A C++ compiler (e.g. GCC, Clang, MSVC)

Usage

Build

We follow the “out-of-source build” approach recommended by the CMake documentation.

1. Create a build directory and move into it:

   mkdir build
   cd build

2. Generate the project files:

   # On Windows (will generate project files to compile with MSVC)
   cmake ../
   
   # On Linux (will generate Makefiles for compiling with GCC)
   cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ../

3. Build the project:

   # On Windows
   cmake --build . --config Debug
   
   # On Linux
   cmake --build .

Note: for building under Release mode, replace Debug with Release in the above commands.

Re-building after changes

• If you make changes to CMakeLists.txt, you need to repeat steps 2 and 3.

• But if you only make changes to the source files, just repeat step 3.

Run the tests

This project is configured for testing with the doctest library. Inside the build directory, run:

# Windows
./Debug/tests.exe

# Linux
./tests

Run the app

Inside the build directory we created above, we can find the executable files for SquareRootCalc and FactorialCalc. (When compiling on Windows with MSVC they will have the .exe extension and they'll be placed in a folder called Debug or Release depending on the configuration chosen at build-time).

You can run them as follows:

# Windows
./Debug/SquareRootCalc.exe 2
./Debug/FactorialCalc.exe 4

# Linux
./SquareRootCalc 2
./FactorialCalc 4

Shortcuts

Clean everything, re-generate the project files, build the project, run the tests and run the SquareRootCalc & FactorialCalc CLI apps (assuming you're in the build directory):

rm -rf * && cmake ../ && cmake --build . && ./Debug/tests.exe && ./Debug/SquareRootCalc.exe 2 && ./Debug/FactorialCalc.exe 4

Resources

• CMake Tutorial steps
• CMake Tutorial source code
• Doctest tutorial