CMake is an extensible, open-source system that manages the build process in an operating system and compiler independent manner. Unlike many cross-platform systems, CMake is designed to be used in conjunction with the native build environment. CMake can compile source code, create libraries, generate wrappers, and build executables in arbitrary combinations. CMake supports in-source and out-of-source builds, and can therefore support multiple builds from a single source tree. CMake provides extensive support for building static and dynamic libraries.

This book contains instructions on how to download, install, and run CMake on many platforms including Linux (UNIX), Microsoft Windows, and Mac OSX. The internals of how CMake works and how it impacts your build scripts is covered. Instructions are provided for running the different GUIs including command line options and a separate chapter on using ctest (included with CMake) to perform software testing. A full reference of CMake's commands and variables with descriptions is included.

Using CMake is simple. The build process is controlled by creating one or more CMakeLists.txt files in each directory (including subdirectories) that make up a project. Each CMakeLists.txt consists of one or more commands with the form COMMAND (args...) where COMMAND is the name of the command, and args is a white-space separated list of arguments. CMake includes commands for finding libraries and header files, support for optional components of your software, testing the compiler and platform for specific features, and much more. CMake provides many powerful pre-defined commands, but if you need to, you can even add your own commands using CMake's support for dynamically loaded commands.