Can Cmake generate a single makefile that supports both debug and release

Question

It seems like we need to create separate folder for each build type (debug/release), run cmake on each, and generate separate makefile for debug/release configuration. Is it possible to create one single makefile using cmake that supports both debug/release configuration at the same time and when we actually run "make" that will create separate folders for the intermediate and final products (like the dlls, exe).

Answer 1

As far as I know, this cannot be achieved using a single set of build scripts. However, what you can do is have two sub-directories of your working area:

build/
build/debug
build/release

Then do:

$ cd build
$
$ cd build/debug
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ../..
$ make
$
$ cd ../release
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ../..
$ make

If necessary, you can add another build script in the build directory as such:

#!/bin/sh
cd debug   && make && cd ..
cd release && make && cd ..

Answer 2

This can be achieved using the ADD_CUSTOM_TARGET command. For example, if you want to add both debug and release targets in your makefile, add the following to your CMakeLists.txt file:

ADD_CUSTOM_TARGET(debug
  COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}
  COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} --build ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR} --target all
  COMMENT "Creating the executable in the debug mode.")

ADD_CUSTOM_TARGET(release
  COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}
  COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} --build ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR} --target all
  COMMENT "Creating the executable in the release mode.")

Then, after configuring with cmake, you can run make debug to make the debug target and run make release to make the release target in the same directory.