Where can a project install its CMake modules

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1

If some project provides its own CMake modules, where would be the best place to install them on the system so other projects can simply use them via include() and find_package()?

Does CMake have any such additional path out of the box somehow?

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I’d also be curios to know what is the best/common practice for this.

In our project we have our own CMake modules too, and we have been installing them into ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/share/OurPackage/modules/ as a part of a relocatable package, so the resulting folder structure is this:

├── debug
│   └── lib
│       └── [ ... debug binaries ... ]
├── include
│   └── our-package
│       └── [ ... public headers ... ]
├── lib
│   └── [ ... release binaries ... ]
└── share
    └── OurPackage
        ├── modules # here are the modules
        │    ├── some.cmake
        │    ├── thing.cmake
        │    └── another.cmake
        ├── OurPackageConfig.cmake
        ├── OurPackageConfigVersion.cmake
        ├── OurPackageTargets-debug.cmake
        ├── OurPackageTargets-release.cmake
        └── OurPackageTargets.cmake

And then of course our users aside from providing path to our package in CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH (or in OurPackage_DIR) also need to add path to our modules (/path/to/our/package/prefix/share/OurPackage/modules) into their project’s CMAKE_MODULE_PATH.

Not sure if this is how it should be done, but it seems to be working fine so far.

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3

I’d just make a package. If you want users to then include things piece-by-piece, offer a variable for where they live:

find_package(YourCoolPackage)
list(INSERT CMAKE_MODULE_PATH 0
  ${YourCoolPackage_CMAKE_MODULE_PATH})
include(YourCoolPackage_API)

Then you provide a YourCoolPackageConfig.cmake in its normal search locations (<prefix>/share/cmake/YourCoolPackage-1.0/YourCoolPackageConfig.cmake).

If piece-by-piece isn’t necessary, just include() the API bits in the package itself.

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