External Projects

An external project in a CMake system is a separate, self-contained CMake project that can be turned into a target, which can then be used as a dependency on other targets in your build system.

The ExternalProject module runs it’s commands at build time.

Adding An External Project

An external project can be added with the command ExternalProject_Add().

CMAKE_ARGS can be used to provide command-line style arguments to the CMakeLists.txt file in this external project.

You can use this to “pass-in parameters” to the called CMakeLists.txt file by using the -D option to create a cache entry.

ExternalProject_Add(
    ...
    CMAKE_ARGS -DMY_VARIABLE=1
    ...
)

Add CMake-enabled projects to an existing CMake-enabled project can become quite a complex task. The article at https://coderwall.com/p/y3zzbq/use-cmake-enabled-libraries-in-your-cmake-project details an elegant solution.

Difference Between ExternalProject_Add() And add_subdirectory()

It can be confusing when you want to add-in a CMake-managed project into your current project, which is also CMake-managed. There are a few ways of doing so, one being ExternalProject_Add() and the other add_subdirectory(). After-all, add_subdirectory() doesn’t have to actually be a subdirectory (it can be any directory on the system).

ExternalProject_Add() is much more powerful than add_subdirectory().