Configuration options

The configuration options that you will encounter would be one of the

CMake native options

The full list of cmake variables can be overwhelming for newcomers, however this is a great resource to find all that CMake can do. Here I will give just list the very most basic options that you typically need to get started.

Option	Effect	Notes
CMAKE_<LANG>_COMPILER	Specify <LANG> compiler
CMAKE_<LANG>_FLAGS	Append <LANG> compiler flags	Try to avoid [1]
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX	Specify where to install the project
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE	Specify what build variant to configure	Can be set to "" to disable CMake default flags

Here <LANG> is typically one of C, CXX, Fortran, and many others.

Important

There are more options related to finding/importing dependencies explained in the import section. Please read that section carefully.

Project specific options

Consult with the actual project’s documentation for the options available. Here is just the list of options that are encouraged to be implemented by this template.

Option	Effect	Notes
<PROJECT>_TESTS	Build project’s test-suite	Dynamic default [2]
<PROJECT>_SHARED_LIBS	Build project’s libraries as shared library	Dynamic default [2]
<PROJECT>_INSTALL	Enable installing the project	Dynamic default [2]

Here <PROJECT> is the project’s option namespace, which is typically the uppercase name of the project.

Upstream project options

CMake options are propagated to upstream dependencies that are imported if the project is imported via FetchContent (see import section for more details). You can thus control the options of these dependencies as well, e.g. you could set <PROJECT2>_TESTS=ON to test the imported <PROJECT2> as well.

This, however, does not work with installed projects.

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[1]

Use project native options. Otherwise, these flags will propagate to all dependencies (consider the effect of -Wall flag)

[2] (1,2,3)

If the project is the main CMake project, i.e. it is not being imported, the default is ON, otherwise it is OFF