Step 12: Packaging Debug and Release

Note: This example is valid for single-configuration generators and will not work for multi-configuration generators (e.g. Visual Studio).

By default, CMake's model is that a build directory only contains a single configuration, be it Debug, Release, MinSizeRel, or RelWithDebInfo. It is possible, however, to setup CPack to bundle multiple build directories and construct a package that contains multiple configurations of the same project.

First, we want to ensure that the debug and release builds use different names for the executables and libraries that will be installed. Let's use d as the postfix for the debug executable and libraries.

Set CMAKE_DEBUG_POSTFIX near the beginning of the top-level CMakeLists.txt file:

CMakeLists.txt

set(CMAKE_DEBUG_POSTFIX d)

add_library(tutorial_compiler_flags INTERFACE)

And the DEBUG_POSTFIX property on the tutorial executable:

CMakeLists.txt

add_executable(Tutorial tutorial.cxx)
set_target_properties(Tutorial PROPERTIES DEBUG_POSTFIX ${CMAKE_DEBUG_POSTFIX})

target_link_libraries(Tutorial PUBLIC MathFunctions)

Let's also add version numbering to the MathFunctions library. In MathFunctions/CMakeLists.txt, set the VERSION and SOVERSION properties:

MathFunctions/CMakeLists.txt

set_property(TARGET MathFunctions PROPERTY VERSION "1.0.0")
set_property(TARGET MathFunctions PROPERTY SOVERSION "1")

From the Step12 directory, create debug and release subbdirectories. The layout will look like:

- Step12
   - debug
   - release

Now we need to setup debug and release builds. We can use CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to set the configuration type:

cd debug
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
cmake --build .
cd ../release
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
cmake --build .

Now that both the debug and release builds are complete, we can use a custom configuration file to package both builds into a single release. In the Step12 directory, create a file called MultiCPackConfig.cmake. In this file, first include the default configuration file that was created by the cmake executable.

Next, use the CPACK_INSTALL_CMAKE_PROJECTS variable to specify which projects to install. In this case, we want to install both debug and release.

MultiCPackConfig.cmake

include("release/CPackConfig.cmake")

set(CPACK_INSTALL_CMAKE_PROJECTS
    "debug;Tutorial;ALL;/"
    "release;Tutorial;ALL;/"
    )

From the Step12 directory, run cpack specifying our custom configuration file with the config option:

cpack --config MultiCPackConfig.cmake