Cmake copy files

We often encounter the situation of copying third-party library files to the project runtime folder, or copying the library files generated by the subproject to the project runtime folder. COPY copies files, directories and symbolic links to the target folder. The relative input path is evaluated relative to the current source directory, and the relative destination is evaluated relative to the current build directory.

Copying preserves the time stamp of the input file and optimizes the file if the file exists in the target file with the same time stamp. For each symbolic link installed, the resolution is stripped from the directory, leaving only the file name, which means that the new symbolic link points to a file in the same directory as the symbolic link.

This feature is useful on some Unix systems where the library is installed as a version number with a symbolic link, and less specific versions point to specific versions. For example, if you have the following directory structure:. Even if you use options to select a subset of files, the copied directory will retain the structure of its contents.

The installation script generated by the install command uses this signature and some undocumented internal usage options. This command can add a custom build rule to the generated build system.

There are two usage methods here, one is to generate output files in the build through custom commands, and the other is to add custom commands to the build target. The command formats are:.

Specifies the output file expected by the command. If the name of the output file is a relative path, it is relative to the source directory path of the current build. The output file can specify multiple output1, output2 optional , etc. Specify the command line to be executed at build time. The ARGS parameter is for backward compatibility and is optional. Optional command, specify the file expected by the command, but its modification time may be newer than the dependency, or it may not be updated.

Optional command to request to scan the implicit dependencies of input files. The COPY signature copies files, directories, and symlinks to a destination folder. Relative input paths are evaluated with respect to the current source directory, and a relative destination is evaluated with respect to the current build directory. Copying preserves input file timestamps, and optimizes out a file if it exists at the destination with the same timestamp.

Relative paths are treated differently as it happens usually with cmake. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. CMake: Copy files from build directory to source directoy Ask Question. Asked 4 years, 5 months ago. Active 4 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 1k times. Sadik Sadik 3, 6 6 gold badges 49 49 silver badges 85 85 bronze badges.

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Jeffrey Bosboom Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Copying multiple files is available from CMake 3. Knitschi Knitschi 2, 1 1 gold badge 25 25 silver badges 46 46 bronze badges. This would work, but wouldn't this create a massive makefile when attempting to copy hundreds of files? I guess so, but you did not write that you had massive amounts of files. Sorry that I could not help you. Also if you want to copy to the current bin dir. On Windows at least this actually gets concatenated into a very long single command line, sufficiently long that cmd.

CMake really needs a better way of doing this. Fraser Fraser While I like your approach here, I'm still looking for something a bit more simple than using tar. Now maybe putting this into a CMake function in some include, that might work. Yeah - I was hoping someone else would have a better answer. David David 31 2 2 bronze badges. I like your example, David. But I do not grok it yet.