How to create a shared library with cmake?

Question

Always specify the minimum required version of cmake

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.9)

You should declare a project. cmake says it is mandatory and it will define convenient variables PROJECT_NAME, PROJECT_VERSION and PROJECT_DESCRIPTION (this latter variable necessitate cmake 3.9):

project(mylib VERSION 1.0.1 DESCRIPTION "mylib description")

Declare a new library target. Please avoid the use of file(GLOB ...). This feature does not provide attended mastery of the compilation process. If you are lazy, copy-paste output of ls -1 sources/*.cpp :

add_library(mylib SHARED
    sources/animation.cpp
    sources/buffers.cpp
    [...]
)

Set VERSION property (optional but it is a good practice):

set_target_properties(mylib PROPERTIES VERSION ${PROJECT_VERSION})

You can also set SOVERSION to a major number of VERSION. So libmylib.so.1 will be a symlink to libmylib.so.1.0.0.

set_target_properties(mylib PROPERTIES SOVERSION 1)

Declare public API of your library. This API will be installed for the third-party application. It is a good practice to isolate it in your project tree (like placing it include/ directory). Notice that, private headers should not be installed and I strongly suggest to place them with the source files.

set_target_properties(mylib PROPERTIES PUBLIC_HEADER include/mylib.h)

If you work with subdirectories, it is not very convenient to include relative paths like "../include/mylib.h". So, pass a top directory in included directories:

target_include_directories(mylib PRIVATE .)

or

target_include_directories(mylib PRIVATE include)
target_include_directories(mylib PRIVATE src)

Create an install rule for your library. I suggest to use variables CMAKE_INSTALL_*DIR defined in GNUInstallDirs:

include(GNUInstallDirs)

And declare files to install:

install(TARGETS mylib
    LIBRARY DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR}
    PUBLIC_HEADER DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_INCLUDEDIR})

You may also export a pkg-config file. This file allows a third-party application to easily import your library:

• with Makefile, see pkg-config
• with Autotools, see PKG_CHECK_MODULES
• with cmake, see pkg_check_modules

Create a template file named mylib.pc.in (see pc(5) manpage for more information):

prefix=@CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX@
exec_prefix=@CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX@
libdir=${exec_prefix}/@CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR@
includedir=${prefix}/@CMAKE_INSTALL_INCLUDEDIR@

Name: @PROJECT_NAME@
Description: @PROJECT_DESCRIPTION@
Version: @PROJECT_VERSION@

Requires:
Libs: -L${libdir} -lmylib
Cflags: -I${includedir}

In your CMakeLists.txt, add a rule to expand @ macros (@ONLY ask to cmake to not expand variables of the form ${VAR}):

configure_file(mylib.pc.in mylib.pc @ONLY)

And finally, install generated file:

install(FILES ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/mylib.pc DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_DATAROOTDIR}/pkgconfig)

You may also use cmake EXPORT feature. However, this feature is only compatible with cmake and I find it difficult to use.

Finally the entire CMakeLists.txt should looks like:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.9)
project(mylib VERSION 1.0.1 DESCRIPTION "mylib description")
include(GNUInstallDirs)
add_library(mylib SHARED src/mylib.c)
set_target_properties(mylib PROPERTIES
    VERSION ${PROJECT_VERSION}
    SOVERSION 1
    PUBLIC_HEADER api/mylib.h)
configure_file(mylib.pc.in mylib.pc @ONLY)
target_include_directories(mylib PRIVATE .)
install(TARGETS mylib
    LIBRARY DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR}
    PUBLIC_HEADER DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_INCLUDEDIR})
install(FILES ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/mylib.pc
    DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_DATAROOTDIR}/pkgconfig)

EDIT

As mentioned in comments, to comply with standards you should be able to generate a static library as well as a shared library. The process is bit more complex and does not match with the initial question. But it worths to mention that it is greatly explained here.

This minimal CMakeLists.txt file compiles a simple shared library:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)

project (test)
set(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE Release)

include_directories(${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/include)
add_library(test SHARED src/test.cpp)

However, I have no experience copying files to a different destination with CMake. The file command with the COPY/INSTALL signature looks like it might be useful.

I'm trying to learn how to do this myself, and it seems you can install the library like this:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.4.0)

project(mycustomlib)

# Find source files
file(GLOB SOURCES src/*.cpp)

# Include header files
include_directories(include)

# Create shared library
add_library(${PROJECT_NAME} SHARED ${SOURCES})

# Install library
install(TARGETS ${PROJECT_NAME} DESTINATION lib/${PROJECT_NAME})

# Install library headers
file(GLOB HEADERS include/*.h)
install(FILES ${HEADERS} DESTINATION include/${PROJECT_NAME})

First, this is the directory layout that I am using:

.
├── include
│   ├── class1.hpp
│   ├── ...
│   └── class2.hpp
└── src
    ├── class1.cpp
    ├── ...
    └── class2.cpp

After a couple of days taking a look into this, this is my favourite way of doing this thanks to modern CMake:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5)
project(mylib VERSION 1.0.0 LANGUAGES CXX)

set(DEFAULT_BUILD_TYPE "Release")

if(NOT CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE AND NOT CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES)
  message(STATUS "Setting build type to '${DEFAULT_BUILD_TYPE}' as none was specified.")
  set(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE "${DEFAULT_BUILD_TYPE}" CACHE STRING "Choose the type of build." FORCE)
  # Set the possible values of build type for cmake-gui
  set_property(CACHE CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE PROPERTY STRINGS "Debug" "Release" "MinSizeRel" "RelWithDebInfo")
endif()

include(GNUInstallDirs)

set(SOURCE_FILES src/class1.cpp src/class2.cpp)

add_library(${PROJECT_NAME} ...)

target_include_directories(${PROJECT_NAME} PUBLIC
    $<BUILD_INTERFACE:${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/include>
    $<INSTALL_INTERFACE:include>
    PRIVATE src)

set_target_properties(${PROJECT_NAME} PROPERTIES
    VERSION ${PROJECT_VERSION}
    SOVERSION 1)

install(TARGETS ${PROJECT_NAME} EXPORT MyLibConfig
    ARCHIVE  DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR}
    LIBRARY  DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR}
    RUNTIME  DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_BINDIR})
install(DIRECTORY include/ DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_INCLUDEDIR}/${PROJECT_NAME})

install(EXPORT MyLibConfig DESTINATION share/MyLib/cmake)

export(TARGETS ${PROJECT_NAME} FILE MyLibConfig.cmake)

After running CMake and installing the library, there is no need to use Find***.cmake files, it can be used like this:

find_package(MyLib REQUIRED)

#No need to perform include_directories(...)
target_link_libraries(${TARGET} mylib)

That's it, if it has been installed in a standard directory it will be found and there is no need to do anything else. If it has been installed in a non-standard path, it is also easy, just tell CMake where to find MyLibConfig.cmake using:

cmake -DMyLib_DIR=/non/standard/install/path ..

I hope this helps everybody as much as it has helped me. Old ways of doing this were quite cumbersome.