What is the best way to integrate a CMake project into Buck?

Question

I am using Buck for my own C++ project, but I depend on a third-party library that is built using CMake. The CMake file is complex, so I do not think it is practical to recreate their CMake file in Buck. Instead, I would like to call CMake from Buck.

What is the best way to call CMake from Buck?

How should I structure my project to minimise headaches?

You want to build that CMake library as part of your build process? — arrowd, Dec 06 '16 at 13:15
Maybe you could try with a genrule? https://buckbuild.com/rule/genrule.html — LavaScornedOven, Jan 05 '17 at 08:46

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 13 '18 at 14:13

4

My suggestion is using genrule and prebuilt_cxx_library.

This is my Buck study project using Google Test: https://github.com/ar90n/lab/tree/master/sandbox/buck-study/gtest

This project contains two Buck files. The one (./gtest/BUCK) is for fetching and building Google Test. The another (./BUCK) is for building and running test programs.

If you want to build and run this project, please execute the following commands,

$ buck fetch //gtest:googletest-src
$ buck build :sample1
$ buck run :sample1

edited Nov 13 '18 at 14:13

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 16 '17 at 01:18

Masahiro Wada

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Yes, that works. For Google Test there is a proper BUCK file here https://github.com/njlr/googletest/blob/a9384dbf3d795e730f942b468dae38158e6be863/BUCK – sdgfsdh May 16 '17 at 06:21

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 13 '18 at 14:14

Calling CMake will break reproducibility, so it isn't the best approach. Instead, try the following:

Fork the project that builds with CMake.
Call CMake to generate any header files.
Save the header files somewhere in the project (e.g. /cmake-generated).
Create a header-only library of the header files generated by CMake.
Build the rest of the project with Buck, depending on the CMake library.
Commit everything to Git.
Repeat step 2 for every target that you require.

This is not as good as a true port to Buck, but you get most of the benefits for a one-time manual step.

What is the best way to integrate a CMake project into Buck?

2 Answers2