cmake to create Makefile with *.cpp rule

Question

I'm just getting started with cmake, I've read some tutorials and got the basic stuff working.

However currently my CMakesList.txt generates a Makefile that has every .cpp explicitly named. That means, whenever I add a new .cpp to my project, I need to rerun cmake, before I can make. While this is not a huge deal, it's still a bit annoying.

Since Makefiles can do something like SOURCES=*.cpp, I thought there's probably a way to tell cmake to generate the Makefile with such a rule!?

I know I can do

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)
file(GLOB SRC
    "*.h"
    "*.cpp"
)
add_executable(main ${SRC})

but with that I still have to rerun cmake.

Answer 1

As far as I know, the way to do it is as you have said and the downside is that you have to run cmake every time you add a file.

What I usually do to overcome this is to make a custom target that calls cmake as well. It goes like this

ADD_CUSTOM_TARGET(update
    COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}
    COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} --build ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR} --target all
    COMMENT "Cmake and build"
)

With this you may call make update and it will call cmake first which captures all the files and then starts the build process.