[CMake] Under Visual Studio , allow developers to hit "F7" to run the INSTALL target

[david_bjornbak at agilent.com]

I've tried similar techniques with ADD_DEPENDENCIES to ALL_BUILD and the trouble with this,  within a single project these targets are not generated yet and you would have to change CMake's C++ code to change this type of behavior.

CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:231 (set_target_properties):
  set_target_properties Can not find target to add properties to: INSTALL

You might be able to export the target but, I don't believe you can export and import INSTALL and ALL_BUILD targets in a reasonable manner.

++David->Bjornbak;

From: aaron.meadows at thomsonreuters.com [mailto:aaron.meadows at thomsonreuters.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 7:55 AM
To: BJORNBAK,DAVID (A-Sonoma,ex1); cmake at cmake.org
Subject: RE: [CMake] Under Visual Studio , allow developers to hit "F7" to run the INSTALL target

I wonder if you could do something like:

  set_target_properties(INSTALL PROPERTIES EXCLUDE_FROM_DEFAULT_BUILD 0 )

Aaron Meadows

From: david_bjornbak at agilent.com [mailto:david_bjornbak at agilent.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 9:44 AM
To: Meadows, Aaron C.; cmake at cmake.org
Subject: RE: [CMake] Under Visual Studio , allow developers to hit "F7" to run the INSTALL target

What I'm asking  for is 1) or "Can you set things up so that F7 does a full build and then automatically does the INSTALL target build?"

Developers in my team have expressed a need to hit F7 during they're day to day work and the resulting being the INSTALL target.

This is not a general change I would adopt for our automated build processes and I can see the need for an individual developer using Visual Studio having this functionality e.g. hit F7 and have the INSTALL target fire off.

A post build step appears to be the only present option for this request.  The other alternative is to alter CMake's C++ code and change the dependency and behavior or the generator for Visual Studio.

++David->Bjornbak;

From: aaron.meadows at thomsonreuters.com<mailto:aaron.meadows at thomsonreuters.com> [mailto:aaron.meadows at thomsonreuters.com]<mailto:[mailto:aaron.meadows at thomsonreuters.com]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 7:33 AM
To: BJORNBAK,DAVID (A-Sonoma,ex1); cmake at cmake.org<mailto:cmake at cmake.org>
Subject: RE: [CMake] Under Visual Studio , allow developers to hit "F7" to run the INSTALL target

I had a hard time following these questions.  It sounds like you're asking the following:


1)     Can you set things up so that F7 does a full build and then automatically does the INSTALL target build?

2)     Can you set things up so that you can build a sub project and have it install just that sub project automatically?

Assuming those are your questions, I'm guessing there isn't a good way to do that automatically.  Barring any better suggestions from more experienced CMaketeers, I would probably look into creating a function that adds a post build step to a project which will perform the installation of the project.  Then doing a build all would cause each project to individually build and install, and building a single subproject would cause that subproject to build and install (thus solving 1 and 2 together).  That doesn't seem ideal (certainly, I wouldn't want my build to automatically install all the time, which is probably why the INSTALL project is excluded by default.).  Depending on what you are doing, you might want that auto install behavior to only be tied to a "Release" build, or possibly introduce and "Release and Install" that does both.


Aaron Meadows

From: cmake-bounces at cmake.org<mailto:cmake-bounces at cmake.org> [mailto:cmake-bounces at cmake.org]<mailto:[mailto:cmake-bounces at cmake.org]> On Behalf Of david_bjornbak at agilent.com<mailto:david_bjornbak at agilent.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2012 1:48 PM
To: cmake at cmake.org<mailto:cmake at cmake.org>
Subject: [CMake] Under Visual Studio , allow developers to hit "F7" to run the INSTALL target

Developers on our team have found issues with the difference between "INSTALL" and the default build or "F7" build all under Visual Studio.  My question is, there's a reasonable way to configure cmake or Visual Studio to run the INSTALL target when you hit "F7" or use the default "Build Solution" functionality to run INSTALL.

We're working a fairly large project and the default setting of having INSTALL dependent on ALL or separating out the two targets makes sense when you're building the entire project.

However, we allow developers to build sub projects and it makes sense if these sub project just install quickly into a larger pre-built installation directory.  The confusion currently is, they run ALL_BUILD or "F7" and the build finishes and they forget to run "INSTALL".    Particularly we, had developers that worked formally on smaller non-Cmake Visual Studio projects and not Linux so, they're not used to the make all and then make install defacto standard.
This request is similar as the following on "Selecting INSTALL target in Visual Studio Configuration by default"  but, I wanted to see if anyone had any other suggestions on this topic.
http://www.cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/2011-April/044025.html

++David->Bjornbak;


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