4 October 2017 by Phillip Johnston • Last updated 14 December 2021

When I first started learning CMake, I was surprised at how few tutorials and good references exist on the internet. Here’s a list of resources that I have found to be helpful.

Note: Since we originally published this article, we also created a course that teaches you modern CMake, as well as a course for intermediate and advanced users on creating a reusable CMake project skeleton.

Table of Contents:

1. Learning CMake
2. Videos
3. Cheat Sheets
4. Documentation
5. Project Skeletons
6. List of Global Variables

Learning CMake

• Effective Modern CMake
• An Introduction to Modern CMake
• It’s Time to do CMake Right
• CGold: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to CMake
• CMake by Example
• CMake Tutorial (Seven part series)
• Tutorial: Easily supporting CMake install and find_package()
• Tutorial: Easy dependency management for C++ with CMake and Git
• CMake FAQ
• CMake on Stack Overflow

Video

• Mathieu Ropert: Using Modern CMake Patterns to Enforce a Good Modular Design
• Deniz Bahadir: More Modern CMake
• Tutorial Series

Audio

• CPPCast: Professional CMake – Rob and Jason are joined by Craig Scott. They first discuss a recent blog post from PVS-Studio analyzing some bugs in CMake. Then Craig talks about how he got involved in CMake development, and his e-book ‘Professional CMake: A Practical Guide.’

Cheat Sheets

• CMake Cheatsheet
• CMake Useful Variables
• List of CMake Properties
• OverAPI: CMake

Documentation

• CMake Documentation
• CMake Wiki
• CMake FAQ

Dependency Management

• Easily Supporting CMake Install and find_package()
• CMake Dependency Handling

Packaging

• Creating Simple Installers with CPack

Project Skeletons

• CrustyAuklet/seal-test – Blinky CMake skeleton for an embedded target
  • Uses CMSIS as a CMake module
• cortexm/baremetal– ARM Cortex-M bare-metal example code in C++ with a CMake build system

List of Global Variables

• CMAKE_BINARY_DIR
  • Same as CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR for in-source builds
  • Otherwise, top-level directory of your build tree
• CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR
  • Top-level source directory
• EXECUTABLE_OUTPUT_PATH
  • Set this variable to specify where executables should be placed (instead of CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR)
  • SET(EXECUTABLE_OUTPUT_PATH ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/bin)
• LIBRARY_OUTPUT_PATH
  • Set this variable to specify where libraries should be placed (instead of CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR)
  • SET(LIBRARY_OUTPUT_PATH ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/lib)
• PROJECT_NAME
  • The name of the project set by the project() command
• PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR
  • Full path to the root of your project source directory (nearest directory where CMakeLists.txt contains the project() command