cmake to place the intermediate files to a certain directory

Question

I am pretty new to cmake and wonder how I can do this is cmake. I want to place all the intermediate files (like the .o files) to be placed in a certain directory (say "build") and then once the build is done I want copy certain files I need (e.g., the .exe, .dll like the end product) from build directory to "stage" directory. how can I specify the path to these two directories (build and stage)? Cmake will also check if the build/stage directory exists or not. If does not exist, it will create the directories for me.

Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

What are you asking is the most often CMake use case.

To make whole build process to occur in arbitary dir, you should run cmake /path/to/your/project from that dir (or use cmake-gui).

Your source dir would be untouched until you explicitly tell CMake to output some files there.

As for point 2:

You should place install() invocations into your CMakeLists.txt (see documentation on install()) and set CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to the dir where you wish files to be copied. After that you can run make install or cmake -P cmake_install.cmake from your build dir to install these files.