Help bundling external dependencies into the final executable

Usage
1

I’m currently trying to bundle all external dependencies with my final executable, that way I can move it around without needing to move .so's or .dll's around too.

my CMakeListst.txt is:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0.0)
project(executionbackup VERSION 0.1.0)

# include(CTest)
# enable_testing()
set(CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/bin)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 20)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON)

option(BUILD_SHARED_LIBS "Build shared libraries" ON)

add_executable(executionbackup main.cpp)

set(CPACK_PROJECT_NAME ${PROJECT_NAME})
set(CPACK_PROJECT_VERSION ${PROJECT_VERSION})
include(CPack)

target_include_directories(executionbackup PUBLIC ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR})

add_subdirectory(boost-cmake)
target_link_libraries(executionbackup PUBLIC Boost::boost)
target_link_libraries(executionbackup PUBLIC Boost::program_options)

include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(cpr GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/libcpr/cpr.git
    GIT_TAG db351ffbbadc6c4e9239daaa26e9aefa9f0ec82d)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(cpr)
target_link_libraries(executionbackup PRIVATE cpr::cpr)

FetchContent_Declare(json URL https://github.com/nlohmann/json/releases/download/v3.10.5/json.tar.xz)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(json)
target_link_libraries(executionbackup PRIVATE nlohmann_json::nlohmann_json)

# get spdlog through FetchContent
FetchContent_Declare(spdlog GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/gabime/spdlog.git
    GIT_TAG v1.10.0)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(spdlog)
target_link_libraries(executionbackup PRIVATE spdlog::spdlog)

install(TARGETS executionbackup DESTINATION bin)

and then I configure and install, and then call install with
cmake --install build --prefix instdir --strip
but the resulting items in instdir are still in the bin, lib, include.

I tried adding BUILD_SHARED_LIBS but that didn’t work.

2

If you want to copy/install dependent DLLs, you need to do that manually. You can use file(GET_RUNTIME_DEPENDENCIES) to do this.

3

I want to not get independent DLL’s (or .so’s), but have everything in one executable.

4

That is generally a static build rather than a shared build.