available ressources for CMake's syntax description?

hex · September 17, 2021, 8:25am

does anyone know of a complete syntax description for CMake? I’m planning to create more accurate syntax highlighting for Sublime Text.

The CMake documentation is of course a good starting point.

erk · September 17, 2021, 8:41am

AFAIK the syntax is described in various Lex files:

for list file there is:

github.com

Kitware/CMake/blob/master/Source/LexerParser/cmListFileLexer.in.l

%{
/* Distributed under the OSI-approved BSD 3-Clause License.  See accompanying
   file Copyright.txt or https://cmake.org/licensing for details.  */
/*

This file must be translated to C and modified to build everywhere.

Run flex >= 2.6 like this:

  flex --nounistd -DFLEXINT_H --noline -ocmListFileLexer.c cmListFileLexer.in.l

Modify cmListFileLexer.c:
  - remove trailing whitespace:              sed -i 's/\s*$//' cmListFileLexer.c
  - remove blank lines at end of file:       sed -i '${/^$/d;}' cmListFileLexer.c
  - #include "cmStandardLexer.h" at the top: sed -i '1i#include "cmStandardLexer.h"' cmListFileLexer.c

*/

/* IWYU pragma: no_forward_declare yyguts_t */

This file has been truncated. show original

and some other for expression and command arguments.
Not sure this is the best readable way to get CMake syntax.

There is the cmake-format code too:

where some lexer may be found:
cmake_format/cmakelang/lex at master · cheshirekow/cmake_format · GitHubinit.py
Don’t know how it is keep in sync with CMake upstream though.

craig.scott · September 18, 2021, 10:03pm

https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake-language.7.html contains the formal language description, if that’s what you’re looking for.