CMAKE auto header file dependency

Question

Question is similar to this question

Handling header files dependencies with cmake

I have sample program dir having main.c main.h and CMakeLists.txt

main.h contents are

#ifndef MAIN_H
#define MAIN_H
int t=3;
int y=2;
#endif

main.c contents are

#include <main.h>
#include<stdio.h>
int main(){

  printf("%d apple",t);
}

and CMakeLists.txt

PROJECT( test )
AUX_SOURCE_DIRECTORY(. test_SRCS)
include_directories(.)
ADD_EXECUTABLE (main ${test_SRCS})

but cmake is not rebuilding main.c on modification of header file. I want it to auto-generate header file dependency. Is it possible using cmake ?

if not is there any other tool which can do that ?

The dependency management is working fine for me for this example (using GCC and CMake 2.8.0 on Linux). — antonakos, Oct 27 '11 at 19:28
@antonakos is it recompiling the project on modification of main.h header file ? — Vivek Goel, Oct 28 '11 at 04:34
@antonakos specifying minimum version as 2.8 it worked can you please put your comment as answer ? — Vivek Goel, Oct 28 '11 at 07:52

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 28 '11 at 10:26

As mentioned in my comment, I have tried out your example and things were working fine: if main.h was modified then main.c would be recompiled.

My installation of CMake (version 2.8.0) told me to add

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)

to the CMakeLists.txt file, but that is all of the adjustments I needed.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 30 '12 at 02:27

Answering this for others that google search...

I ran into this problem with one of my projects. As it turns out I added the header to the cpp file after running cmake. Re-running cmake fixed the problem. If you run into this, try that and see if it fixes the issue.

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 27 '11 at 21:03

From the cmake 2.8.0 documentation of AUX_SOURCE_DIRECTORY:

It is tempting to use this command to avoid writing the list of source files for a library or executable target. While this seems to work, there is no way for CMake to generate a build system that knows when a new source file has been added. Normally the generated build system knows when it needs to rerun CMake because the CMakeLists.txt file is modified to add a new source. When the source is just added to the directory without modifying this file, one would have to manually rerun CMake to generate a build system incorporating the new file.

Why do you want to avoid creating a list of files? Such lists generally do not change frequently.

sorry to say but your answer is out of scope. What my question was cmake is not rebuilding the project on change of header files. — Vivek Goel, Oct 28 '11 at 04:33
@VivekGoel - Crap, you're right. I misinterpreted it as applying to file modifications as well. Thanks for pointing out my mistake. — Mark, Oct 28 '11 at 20:51

CMAKE auto header file dependency

3 Answers3

Linked

Related