Using CMake without a generator

[RSin]

Is there a way to use CMake without a generator, basically only to benefit from its multi platform features like downloading packages and so on?

We are using CMake to build projects, but also (as an option) to only download different packages and re-bundle them to a zip file (done by the configure step). In this use case (using presets) the availabe generator is not known in advance and even not needed.

I found this question, that already helps a little:

Prevent FetchContent_MakeAvailable to execute CMakeLists.txt

After seeing the deprecation warnings for FetchContent_Populate I replaced it with FetchContent_MakeAvailable but now my project is failing. I use to do this (in a nutshell) # ... FetchContent_Declare(re-logging ...) FetchContent_Populate(re-logging) include("${re-logging_ROOT_DIR}/re-logging.cmake") The issue I am facing with replacing FetchContent_Populate with FetchContent_MakeAvailable is that FetchContent_MakeAvailable seems to automatically “execute” CMakeLists.txt included in re-loggin…

[scivision]

Yes you can use CMake in Script mode

cmake -P myscript.cmake

Options may be given like

cmake -Dmyopt=3 -P myscript.cmake

Cmake is very useful in this way. I use it a lot instead of bash or python scripts this way.

A quirrk of script mode is that because there’s no specific minimum version, cmake falls back to a 2.x compatibility, which can be surprising if you are using regex with strings, as it uses old and uncommon behavior. To avoid surprises, even though it’s not required, I put at the top of my script something like

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.14)

There is even a ray tracer written in pure cmake

[RSin]

Wow, that seems to be exactly what I’ve been looking for!
Thanks!