How to easily add CMake files to be visibile in IDE generators (Visual Studio)?

Usage
,
1

Throughout my code base I have this re-ocurring pattern to provide friendly Visual Studio Support.

target_sources(foo PRIVATE
        # Add CMakeLists.txt so it shows up in Visual Studio generated projects
	CMakeLists.txt
	...
)

I even do this for my custom modules:

target_sources(foo PRIVATE
        # Add modules so they shows up in Visual Studio generated projects
	foo.cmake
	...
)

Is there an easy, good, fast way to do this? Adding them manually as shown above does work but is tedious and error prone.

I tried globbing but our project is pretty big and that adds 10 seconds to the configuration time.

2

I think how you’ve described it is how I’d do it. If you wrapped add_library, you could probably do this in such a wrapper.

3

FWIW, you don’t have to add them extra via target_sources. You can just list them directly in the add_library/add_executable command. All our projects at work do it this way, and it works just fine.

4

Interesting, we do not add them but they are automagically added to the targets in the generated Visual Studio solution. But I guess it only works when you define a target in a CMakeLists.txt.

5

The CMakeLists.txt for a target should be added automatically, but this is only the one for the directory owning the add_library or add_executable call. If you gather sources in subdirectories or have helper files, they’d need manually listed.