# little helper tool wrapping invocation of presets

**URL:** https://discourse.cmake.org/t/little-helper-tool-wrapping-invocation-of-presets/4414
**Category:** Community
**Created:** [November 3, 2021, 9:20pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/little-helper-tool-wrapping-invocation-of-presets/4414 "2021-11-03T21:20:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![benthevining](https://discourse.cmake.org/user_avatar/discourse.cmake.org/benthevining/32/1924_2.png) [@benthevining](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/benthevining)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2021, 9:20pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/little-helper-tool-wrapping-invocation-of-presets/4414/1 "2021-11-03T21:20:01Z")

</div>

I found myself still using simple Makefiles on top of CMake presets, for things like:

- having default generators for each platform without making a different preset for each platform
- setting the number of jobs to the number of cores on the machine
- invoking a configure preset automatically if its binary dir doesn’t exist when the user invokes a build preset
- invoking a build preset with a certain target specified, so I don’t have to write another preset to do that
- simple `clean` operations

Make provided all the functionality I need on Unix, but it’s not very portable to Windows, and it was more code to maintain than I would’ve liked.

So I decided to write a little tool that is specially tuned for these kinds of use cases:

[bake](https://github.com/benthevining/bake) is a simple command line utility that invokes cmake presets. The syntax is `bake <kind>[<name>]`, where `kind` is `config`, `build`, or `test`, and `name` is the name of a non-hidden preset of the corresponding kind in the working directory’s CMakePresets.json.

It works with absolutely no configuration at all – you can just use the `bake <kind>[<name>]` syntax and it should give you sensible defaults. But if you wish, it also accepts a barebones configuration file called a `Bakefile`:

- It’s a series of sections containing options

- Lines starting with `#` and empty lines are ignored

- Lines starting with `*` or `-` are options in a section

- All other lines start a new section

Valid sections are:

- Generators: specify CMake generators to be used on Mac, Windows, and Linux
- Aliases: specify a set of one-word aliases for other actions, for example `all: build[all]` means you can type `bake all` instead of `bake build[all]`. For aliases of build presets, you can also use an arrow `->` to specify a certain target, for example `onlyOne: build[all] -> target1` means `bake onlyOne` will expand to `cmake --build --preset all --target target1`.
- Clean: a set of files or directories, relative to the Bakefile directory, that will be removed when `bake clean` is invoked. `bake clean` also traverses all subdirectories recursively, and for any subdir containing a Bakefile, evaluates those clean commands as well.
- Wipe: similar to clean, but intended for wiping persistent caches, like fetched sources of dependencies.
- Logs: If specified, names a directory relative to the Bakefile directory where bake will write logs of all cmake config and test runs. This logs directory is automatically removed by `bake clean`.

All sections are optional, and you can use bake without writing a Bakefile by sticking with the `bake <kind>[<name>]` syntax.

Example Bakefile:

```auto
Generators:
* Mac: Xcode
* Windows: Visual Studio 16 2019
* Linux: Ninja

Aliases:
* config: config[default]
* all: build[all]
* ios: build[ios]
* plugins: build[all] -> ALL_PLUGINS
* apps: build[all] -> ALL_APPS
* tests: test[all]

Clean:
* Builds/

Wipe:
* Cache/

Logs: 
* logs

```

The entire goal here is to be lightweight, self documenting, and cross platform.

I hope someone finds this useful – any suggestions and feedback are welcome, and the code is completely free to use in any capacity!