CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAMΒΆ

Tool that can launch the native build system. The value may be the full path to an executable or just the tool name if it is expected to be in the PATH.

The tool selected depends on the CMAKE_GENERATOR used to configure the project:

  • The Makefile Generators set this to make, gmake, or a generator-specific tool (e.g. nmake for NMake Makefiles).

    These generators store CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM in the CMake cache so that it may be edited by the user.

  • The Ninja generator sets this to ninja.

    This generator stores CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM in the CMake cache so that it may be edited by the user.

  • The Xcode generator sets this to xcodebuild.

    This generator prefers to lookup the build tool at build time rather than to store CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM in the CMake cache ahead of time. This is because xcodebuild is easy to find.

    For compatibility with versions of CMake prior to 3.2, if a user or project explicitly adds CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM to the CMake cache then CMake will use the specified value.

  • The Visual Studio Generators set this to the full path to MSBuild.exe (VS >= 10), devenv.com (VS 7,8,9), or VCExpress.exe (VS Express 8,9). (See also variables CMAKE_VS_MSBUILD_COMMAND and CMAKE_VS_DEVENV_COMMAND.

    These generators prefer to lookup the build tool at build time rather than to store CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM in the CMake cache ahead of time. This is because the tools are version-specific and can be located using the Windows Registry. It is also necessary because the proper build tool may depend on the project content (e.g. the Intel Fortran plugin to VS 10 and 11 requires devenv.com to build its .vfproj project files even though MSBuild.exe is normally preferred to support the CMAKE_GENERATOR_TOOLSET).

    For compatibility with versions of CMake prior to 3.0, if a user or project explicitly adds CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM to the CMake cache then CMake will use the specified value if possible.

  • The Green Hills MULTI generator sets this to the full path to gbuild.exe(Windows) or gbuild(Linux) based upon the toolset being used.

    Once the generator has initialized a particular value for this variable, changing the value has undefined behavior.

The CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM variable is set for use by project code. The value is also used by the cmake(1) --build and ctest(1) --build-and-test tools to launch the native build process.