How to avoid adding every source file to CMake in CLion?

Question

Most people that switched from some other IDE that had an option to build single file are a bit confused by CLion which doesn't happen to have an option.

So how can you avoid adding every name of every source file into CMake?

Answer 1

What you are looking for is something like file(GLOB_RECURSE *.cpp). You can customize this command to filter out directories, if you need to.

Answer 2

I had the same problem with c++ and CMake using CLion. And this how I managed to solve it:

Here is my project structure :

├── CMakeLists.txt
├── README.md
└── src
    └── ch01
        ├── ex01
        │   └── main.cpp
        └── ex02
            └── main.cpp

Here are the contents of CMakeLists.txt :

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5)

project(CPPTutorial)

set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 14)

set(sourceDir "${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/src")

file(GLOB_RECURSE sourceFiles "${sourceDir}/*.cpp")

FOREACH (sourceFile ${sourceFiles})
    MESSAGE(STATUS "Process file: ${sourceFile}")

    get_filename_component(dir1 ${sourceFile} PATH)
    get_filename_component(dir1 ${dir1} NAME)

    get_filename_component(dir2 "${sourceFile}/../../" ABSOLUTE)
    get_filename_component(dir2 ${dir2} NAME)

    MESSAGE(STATUS "New target: ${dir2}_${dir1}")
    add_executable("${dir2}_${dir1}" ${sourceFile})
endforeach (sourceFile)

It creates a new target for each source in the directory .. actually it needs more work but it does the job for me.

Restrictions:

1. One source file for each sub sub directory
2. the structure needs to be the same as AAA/BBB where AAA is a parent directory and BBB is it's sub directory.
3. You can add more AAA in the same level and also more BBB

Hope it helps