Where should I put CMakeLists.txt files?

Question

We would like to develop a few dynamically-linked libraries in C, each for both Linux and Windows. We would like to use CMake.

How do we organize directories and where do we put those CMakeLists.txt files? (Or should we have just one?)

Answer 1

There is no single way that it must be done, but here is one possible way:

CMakeLists.txt
src/
    CMakeLists.txt
    lib1/
        CMakeLists.txt
        lib1.c
    lib2/
        CMakeLists.txt
        lib2.c
    app/
        CMakeLists.txt
        app.c
include/
    lib1.h
    lib2.h

While you can do everything in the top-level CMakeLists.txt file, it will get large and messy very quickly if your project is complex.