CMake

CMake is an open-source, cross-platform family of build-system generators. It is not a build system itself but a meta-build system that generates native build files for various environments, such as Make, Ninja, Visual Studio, and Xcode, from a common description file called CMakeLists.txt. This approach enables the same project to be built on many platforms with minimal changes.

CMake describes projects using its own scripting language. A typical CMakeLists.txt specifies project name, target sources, libraries, include directories, compile options, and installation rules through commands like project, add_executable, add_library, target_link_libraries, and install. It supports out-of-source builds, where the build artifacts live outside the source tree, and uses a cache to store configuration results. Dependency management features include find_package, as well as integration with FetchContent and ExternalProject for pulling and building external libraries.

Key features include support for multiple programming languages (such as C, C++, Fortran, CUDA), and a variety of platforms and compilers. CMake provides generators for different toolchains and IDEs, enabling multi-config environments like Visual Studio and Xcode, as well as single-config environments like Make or Ninja. The ecosystem includes CTest for testing and CPack for packaging, along with tooling such as cmake-gui and ccmake for configuring projects.

Usage typically involves creating a CMakeLists.txt that describes the project, configuring the build with cmake -S source -B build, and then building with cmake --build build. The generated project or Makefiles can then be used with the native build system. CMake was developed by Kitware and is distributed under a BSD-style license, with widespread adoption in both open-source and commercial software.