CMake generate list of source files without glob

Question

I'm currently using this piece of code to generate my list of source files for CMake to compile my C++ project:

file(GLOB CPP_FILES src/*.cpp)

As I have read here that this is discouraged by CMake I would like to know if I can list the source files explicitly for CMake using CMake, as I am not familiar with scripting languages like Python.

I'm asking this as it would require a lot of work to add all the cpp files manually into CMake, especially when working with multiply people.

The project is platform-independent and my source files are in a sub-folder.

Answer 1

There is no native method for CMake to do this for you.

What you can do for large or shared projects is use a script, that could be created by anything that can scan the filesystem or some other repository, to generate a CMake file that lists the source files.

Then you can just include() this generated CMake file.

Instructions in the CMake file could be using target_sources() for a known target.

CMakeLists.txt:

add_executable(myexe "")
include(sourcelist)

sourcelist.cmake:

target_sources(myexe PRIVATE
    mysourcefile1.cpp
    mysourcefile2.cpp
)

Or via appending to a variable:

CMakeLists.txt:

include(sourcelist)
add_executable(myexe ${sources})

sourcelist.cmake:

set(sources ${sources} 
    mysourcefile1.cpp
    mysourcefile2.cpp
)