README.CMake.txt - Building and using FLTK with CMake ----------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS ========== 1 Introduction to CMake 2 Using CMake to Build FLTK 2.1 Prerequisites 2.2 Options 2.3 Building under Linux with Unix Makefiles 2.4 Building under Windows with Visual Studio 2.5 Building under Windows with MinGW using Makefiles 2.6 Building under MacOS with Xcode 2.7 Crosscompiling 3 Using CMake with FLTK 3.1 Library Names 3.2 Building a Simple "Hello World" Program with FLTK 3.3 Building a Program Using Fluid Files 3.4 Building a Program Using CMake's FetchContent Module 4 Document History 1. Introduction to CMake =========================== CMake was designed to let you create build files for a project once and then compile the project on multiple platforms. Using it on any platform consists of the same steps. Create the CMakeLists.txt build file(s). Run one of the CMake executables, picking your source directory, build directory, and build target. The "cmake" executable is a one-step process with everything specified on the command line. The others let you select options interactively, then configure and generate your platform-specific target. You then run the resulting Makefile / project file / solution file as you normally would. CMake can be run in up to three ways, depending on your platform. "cmake" is the basic command line tool. "ccmake" is the curses based interactive tool. "cmake-gui" is the gui-based interactive tool. Each of these will take command line options in the form of -DOPTION=VALUE. ccmake and cmake-gui will also let you change options interactively. CMake not only supports, but works best with out-of-tree builds. This means that your build directory is not the same as your source directory or with a complex project, not the same as your source root directory. Note that the build directory is where, in this case, FLTK will be built, not its final installation point. If you want to build for multiple targets, such as VC++ and MinGW on Windows, or do some cross-compiling you must use out-of-tree builds exclusively. In-tree builds will gum up the works by putting a CMakeCache.txt file in the source root. More information on CMake can be found on its web site http://www.cmake.org. 2. Using CMake to Build FLTK =============================== 2.1 Prerequisites -------------------- The prerequisites for building FLTK with CMake are staightforward: CMake 3.2.3 or later and a recent FLTK 1.3 release, snapshot, or Git download (working copy). Installation of CMake is covered on its web site. This howto will cover building FLTK with the default options using CMake under Linux and MinGW with Unix Makefiles. Chapter 2.5 shows how to use a MinGW cross compiling toolchain to build a FLTK library for Windows under Linux. Other platforms are just as easy to use. 2.2 Options -------------- Options can be specified to cmake with the -D flag: cmake -D = Example: cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug All options have sensible defaults so you won't usually need to touch these. There are only two CMake options that you may want to specify: CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE This specifies what kind of build this is i.e. Release, Debug... Platform specific compile/link flags/options are automatically selected by CMake depending on this value. CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX Where everything will go on install. Defaults are /usr/local for Unix and C:\Program Files\FLTK for Windows. CMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES (macOS only, ignored on other platforms) Set this to either "arm64", "x86_64", or a list of both "arm64;x86_64". The latter will build "universal apps" on macOS, whereas the former will either build Intel (x86_64) or Apple Silicon aka M1 (arm64) apps. The default is to build for the host processor architecture. The following are the FLTK specific options. Platform specific options are ignored on other platforms. OPTION_OPTIM - default EMPTY Extra optimization flags for the C and C++ compilers, for instance "-Wall -Wno-deprecated-declarations". OPTION_ARCHFLAGS - default EMPTY Extra architecture flags. OPTION_APPLE_X11 - default OFF In case you want to use X11 on macOS. Use this only if you know what you do, and if you have installed X11. OPTION_USE_POLL - default OFF Don't use this one, it is deprecated. OPTION_BUILD_SHARED_LIBS - default OFF Normally FLTK is built as static libraries which makes more portable binaries. If you want to use shared libraries, this will build them too. FLTK_BUILD_TEST - default ON Builds the test and demo programs in the 'test' directory. FLTK_BUILD_EXAMPLES - default OFF Builds the example programs in the 'examples' directory. FLTK_MSVC_RUNTIME_DLL - default ON (only for Visual Studio and NMake). Selects whether the build uses the MS runtime DLL or not. Default is ON: either /MD or /MDd for Release or Debug, respectively. Select OFF for either /MT or /MTd for Release or Debug, respectively. OPTION_CAIRO - default OFF Enables support of class Fl_Cairo_Window (all platforms, requires the Cairo library) - see README.Cairo.txt. OPTION_CAIROEXT - default OFF Enables extended libcairo support - see README.Cairo.txt. OPTION_USE_GL - default ON Enables OpenGL support. OPTION_USE_THREADS - default ON Enables multithreaded support. OPTION_LARGE_FILE - default ON Enables large file (>2G) support. OPTION_USE_SYSTEM_LIBJPEG - default ON (macOS: OFF) OPTION_USE_SYSTEM_LIBPNG - default ON (macOS: OFF) OPTION_USE_SYSTEM_ZLIB - default ON FLTK has built in jpeg, zlib, and png libraries. These options let you use system libraries instead, unless CMake can't find them. If you set any of these options to OFF, then the built in library will be used. OPTION_USE_XINERAMA - default ON OPTION_USE_XFT - default ON OPTION_USE_XDBE - default ON OPTION_USE_XCURSOR - default ON OPTION_USE_XRENDER - default ON These are X11 extended libraries. These libs are used if found on the build system unless the respective option is turned off. OPTION_ABI_VERSION - default EMPTY Use a numeric value corresponding to the FLTK ABI version you want to build in the form 1xxyy for FLTK 1.x.y (xx and yy with leading zeroes). The default ABI version is 1xx00 (the stable ABI throughout all patch releases of one minor FLTK version). The highest ABI version you may choose is 1xxyy for FLTK 1.x.y (again with leading zeroes). Please see README.abi-version.txt for more information about which ABI version to select. Documentation options: these options are only available if `doxygen' is installed and found by CMake. PDF related options require also `latex'. OPTION_BUILD_HTML_DOCUMENTATION - default ON OPTION_BUILD_PDF_DOCUMENTATION - default ON These options can be used to switch HTML documentation generation with doxygen on. If these are ON the build targets 'html', 'pdf', and 'docs' are generated but must be built explicitly. Technically the build targets are generated but excluded from 'ALL'. You can safely leave these two options ON if you want to save build time because the docs are not built automatically. OPTION_INSTALL_HTML_DOCUMENTATION - default OFF OPTION_INSTALL_PDF_DOCUMENTATION - default OFF If these options are ON then the HTML and/or PDF docs are installed when the 'install' target is executed, e.g. with `make install'. You need to select above options OPTION_BUILD_*_DOCUMENTATION as well. 2.3 Building under Linux with Unix Makefiles ----------------------------------------------- After unpacking the FLTK source, go to the root of the FLTK tree and type the following. mkdir build cd build cmake .. make sudo make install (optional) IMPORTANT: The trailing ".." on the cmake command must be specified (it is NOT an ellipsis). ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This will build and install a default configuration FLTK. Some flags can be changed during the 'make' command, such as: make VERBOSE=on ..which builds in verbose mode, so you can see all the compile/link commands. Hint: if you intend to build several different versions of FLTK, e.g. a Debug and a Release version, or multiple libraries with different ABI versions or options, then use subdirectories in the build directory, like this: mkdir build cd build mkdir Debug cd Debug cmake -D 'CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug' ../.. make sudo make install (optional) 2.4 Building under Windows with Visual Studio ------------------------------------------------ Building with CMake under Visual Studio requires the CMake generator with the -G command line switch, or the generator can be selected interactively in the GUI (cmake-gui). 2.4.1 Visual Studio 7 / .NET ------------------------------ 1) Open a "Visual Studio .NET command prompt" window, e.g. Start > All Programs > Microsoft Visual Studio .NET > Visual Studio .NET Tools > Command Prompt 2) In the DOS window created above, change the current directory to where you've extracted an fltk distribution tar file (or snapshot tar file), and run the following commands: cd C:\fltk-1.3.x <-- change to your FLTK directory mkdir build <-- create an empty directory cd build cmake -G "Visual Studio 7" -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release .. IMPORTANT: The trailing ".." on the cmake command must be specified (it is NOT an ellipsis). ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This will create the file FLTK.sln in the current 'build' directory. 3) Open Visual Studio 7, and choose File -> Open -> Project, and pick the "FLTK.sln" created by step #2 in the 'build' directory. (Or, if only one version of the Visual Studio compiler is installed, you can just run from DOS: .\FLTK.sln) 4) Make sure the pulldown menu has either "Release" or "Debug" selected in the "Solution Configurations" pulldown menu. 5) In the "Solution Explorer", right click on: Solution 'FLTK' (## projects) ..and in the popup menu, choose "Build Solution" 5) That's it, that should build FLTK. The test programs (*.exe) can be found in e.g. Release: C:\fltk-1.3.x\build\bin\examples\release\*.exe Debug: C:\fltk-1.3.x\build\bin\examples\debug\*.exe ..and the FLTK include files (*.H & *.h) your own apps can compile with can be found in: Release & Debug: C:\fltk-1.3.x\build\FL *and* [1] in: C:\fltk-1.3.x\FL ..and the FLTK library files (*.lib) which your own apps can link with can be found in: Release: C:\fltk-1.3.x\build\lib\release\*.lib Debug: C:\fltk-1.3.x\build\lib\debug\*.lib [1] If you want to build your own FLTK application directly using the build directories (i.e. without "installation") you need to include both the build tree (first) and then the FLTK source tree in the compiler's header search list. 2.4.2 Visual Studio 2019 / NMake -------------------------------------- This uses cmake to generate + build FLTK in Release mode using nmake, using purely the command line (never need to open the Visual Studio IDE) using Multithreaded (/MT): mkdir build-nmake cd build-nmake cmake -G "NMake Makefiles" -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -D FLTK_MSVC_RUNTIME_DLL=off .. nmake ..which results in a colorful percentage output crawl similar to what we see with unix 'make'. -erco@seriss.com Updated: Dec 8 2023 2.5 Building under Windows with MinGW using Makefiles -------------------------------------------------------- Building with CMake under MinGW requires you to specify the CMake Generator with the -G command line switch. Using cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" /path/to/fltk is recommended by the FLTK team if you have installed MinGW with the MSYS environment. You can use the stock Windows CMake executables, but you must run the CMake executables from within the MinGW environment so CMake can use your MinGW PATH to find the compilers and build tools. Example: alias cmake='/c/CMake/bin/cmake' alias cmake-gui='/c/CMake/bin/cmake-gui' mkdir build cd build cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -D 'CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug' .. Note the path to FLTK ".." in the last command line. Depending on where you installed CMake you may need to adjust the path's in the alias commands. 2.6 Building under MacOS with Xcode ------------------------------------ Building with CMake under Xcode requires the CMake generator with the -G command line switch. This step need to be done only once. If any of the cmake related files are updated, Xcode will rerun cmake for you. 1) Open the MacOS Terminal 2) Change to the directory containing the FLTK project. For example: > cd ~/dev/fltk-1.3.x 3) Create a build directory > mkdir build > cd build 4) If you plan different build versions, it is useful to create another subdirectory level > mkdir Xcode > cd Xcode 5) Let CMake create the required IDE files > cmake -G Xcode ../.. This step should end in the message: -- Build files have been written to: .../dev/fltk-1.3.x/build/Xcode 5a) To build the Release version of FLTK, use > cmake -G Xcode -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ../.. 5b) To create all included libraries instead of using those that come with MacOS, use: > cmake -G Xcode -D OPTION_USE_SYSTEM_LIBJPEG=Off \ -D OPTION_USE_SYSTEM_ZLIB=Off \ -D OPTION_USE_SYSTEM_LIBPNG=Off \ ../.. 6) Launch Xcode from the Finder or from the Terminal: > open ./FLTK.xcodeproj When Xcode starts, it asks if it should "Autocreate Schemes". Click on "Automatically Create Schemes" to confirm. 7) To build and test FLTK, select the scheme "ALL_BUILD" and hit Cmd-B to build. Then select the scheme "demo" and hit Cmd-R to run the FLTK Demo. 8) The interactive user interface tool "Fluid" will be located in build/Xcode/bin/Debug. The example apps are in .../bin/examples/Debug. Static libraries are in .../lib/Debug/ 9) The "install" Scheme currently fails because it is run with user permission. 2.7 Crosscompiling --------------------- Once you have a crosscompiler going, to use CMake to build FLTK you need two more things. You need a toolchain file which tells CMake where your build tools are. The CMake website is a good source of information on this file. Here's one for MinGW (64-bit) under Linux. ---- # CMake Toolchain File for MinGW-w64 (64-bit) Cross Compilation # the name of the target operating system set(CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME Windows) # which tools to use set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER /usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc) set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER /usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++) set(CMAKE_RC_COMPILER /usr/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-windres) # here is where the target environment located set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH /usr/x86_64-w64-mingw32) # adjust the default behavior of the FIND_XXX() commands: # search programs in the host environment set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_PROGRAM NEVER) # search headers and libraries in the target environment set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_LIBRARY ONLY) set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_INCLUDE ONLY) set(CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX ${CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH}/usr CACHE FILEPATH "install path prefix") # initialize required linker flags set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS_INIT "-static-libgcc -static-libstdc++") # end of toolchain file ---- Not too tough. The other thing you need is a native installation of FLTK on your build platform. This is to supply the fluid executable which will compile the *.fl into C++ source and header files. So, again from the FLTK tree root. mkdir mingw cd mingw cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=~/projects/toolchain/Toolchain-mingw32.cmake .. make sudo make install IMPORTANT: The trailing ".." on the cmake command must be specified (it is NOT an ellipsis). ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This will create a default configuration FLTK suitable for mingw/msys and install it in the /usr/x86_64-w64-mingw32/usr tree. Note: replace 'x86_64-w64-mingw32' with your cross toolchain location as required. 3. Using CMake with FLTK =========================== The CMake Export/Import facility can be thought of as an automated fltk-config. For example, if you link your program to the FLTK library, it will automatically link in all of its dependencies. This includes any special flags, i.e. on Linux it includes the -lpthread flag. This howto assumes that you have FLTK libraries which were built using CMake, installed. Building them with CMake generates some CMake helper files which are installed in standard locations, making FLTK easy to find and use. In the following examples we set the CMake cache variable 'FLTK_DIR' so CMake knows where to find the FLTK configuration file 'FLTKConfig.cmake'. It is important (recommended practice) to set this as a CMake cache variable which enables the user executing 'cmake' to override this path either on the commandline or interactively using the CMake GUI 'cmake-gui' or 'ccmake' on Unix/Linux, for instance like this: $ mkdir build $ cd build $ cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -S.. -D "FLTK_DIR=/home/me/fltk" 3.1 Library Names -------------------- When you use the target_link_libraries() command, CMake uses its own internal "target names" for libraries. The fltk library names are: fltk fltk_forms fltk_images fltk_gl and for the shared libraries (if built): fltk_SHARED fltk_forms_SHARED fltk_images_SHARED fltk_gl_SHARED The built-in libraries (if built): fltk_jpeg fltk_png fltk_z 3.2 Building a Simple "Hello World" Program with FLTK -------------------------------------------------------- Here is a basic CMakeLists.txt file using FLTK. --- cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.15) project(hello) set(FLTK_DIR "/path/to/fltk" CACHE FILEPATH "FLTK installation or build directory") find_package(FLTK REQUIRED CONFIG) add_executable(hello WIN32 MACOSX_BUNDLE hello.cxx) if (APPLE) target_link_libraries (hello PRIVATE "-framework cocoa") endif (APPLE) target_include_directories (hello PRIVATE ${FLTK_INCLUDE_DIRS}) target_link_libraries (hello PRIVATE fltk) --- The set(FLTK_DIR ...) command is a superhint to the find_package command. This is very useful if you don't install or have a non-standard install. The find_package command tells CMake to find the package FLTK, REQUIRED means that it is an error if it's not found. CONFIG tells it to search only for the FLTKConfig file, not using the FindFLTK.cmake supplied with CMake, which doesn't work with this version of FLTK. The "WIN32 MACOSX_BUNDLE" in the add_executable tells this is a GUI app. It is ignored on other platforms and should always be present with FLTK GUI programs for better portability - unless you explicitly need to build a "console program", e.g. on Windows. Once the package is found the CMake variable FLTK_INCLUDE_DIRS is defined which can be used to add the FLTK include directories to the definitions used to compile your program using the `target_include_directories()` command. The target_link_libraries() command is used to specify all necessary FLTK libraries. Thus, you may have to add fltk_images, fltk_gl, etc… Note: the variable FLTK_USE_FILE used to include another file in previous FLTK versions was deprecated since FLTK 1.3.4 and has been removed in FLTK 1.4.0. 3.3 Building a Program Using Fluid Files ------------------------------------------- CMake has a command named fltk_wrap_ui which helps deal with fluid *.fl files. Unfortunately it is broken in CMake 3.4.x but it seems to work in 3.5 and later CMake versions. We recommend to use add_custom_command() to achieve the same result in a more explicit and well-defined way. This is a more basic approach and should work for all CMake versions. Here is a sample CMakeLists.txt which compiles the CubeView example from a directory you've copied the test/Cube* files to. --- cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.15) project(CubeView) # change this to your fltk build directory set(FLTK_DIR "/path/to/fltk" CACHE FILEPATH "FLTK installation or build directory") find_package(FLTK REQUIRED CONFIG) # run fluid -c to generate CubeViewUI.cxx and CubeViewUI.h files add_custom_command( OUTPUT "CubeViewUI.cxx" "CubeViewUI.h" COMMAND fluid -c ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/CubeViewUI.fl ) add_executable(CubeView WIN32 MACOSX_BUNDLE CubeMain.cxx CubeView.cxx CubeViewUI.cxx) target_include_directories (CubeView PRIVATE ${FLTK_INCLUDE_DIRS}) target_include_directories (CubeView PRIVATE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}) target_include_directories (CubeView PRIVATE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}) target_link_libraries (CubeView PRIVATE fltk fltk_gl) --- You can repeat the add_custom_command for each fluid file or if you have a large number of them see the CMake/FLTK-Functions.cmake function FLTK_RUN_FLUID for an example of how to run it in a loop. The two lines target_include_directories (CubeView PRIVATE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}) target_include_directories (CubeView PRIVATE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}) add the current build ("binary") and source directories as include directories. This is necessary for the compiler to find the local header files since the fluid-generated files (CubeViewUI.cxx and CubeViewUI.h) are created in the current build directory. 3.4 Building a Program Using CMake's FetchContent Module ----------------------------------------------------------- FLTK can be downloaded and built within a user project using CMake's FetchContent module. A sample CMakeLists.txt file follows. You may need to adjust it to your configuration. --- cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.15) project(hello) include(FetchContent) set(FLTK_BUILD_TEST OFF CACHE BOOL "" FORCE) FetchContent_Declare(FLTK GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/fltk/fltk GIT_SHALLOW TRUE ) FetchContent_MakeAvailable(FLTK) add_executable(hello WIN32 MACOSX_BUNDLE hello.cxx) target_include_directories(hello PRIVATE ${fltk_BINARY_DIR} ${fltk_SOURCE_DIR}) # link as required: fltk fltk_gl fltk_images fltk_png fltk_jpeg fltk_z target_link_libraries(hello PRIVATE fltk) if(APPLE) target_link_libraries(hello PRIVATE "-framework Cocoa") # needed for Darwin endif() if(WIN32) target_link_libraries(hello PRIVATE gdiplus) endif() --- 4 Document History --------------------- Dec 20 2010 - matt: merged and restructured May 15 2013 - erco: small formatting tweaks, added some examples Feb 23 2014 - msurette: updated to reflect changes to the CMake files Apr 07 2015 - AlbrechtS: update use example and more docs Jan 31 2016 - msurette: custom command instead of fltk_wrap_ui Nov 01 2016 - AlbrechtS: add MinGW build Jul 05 2017 - matt: added instructions for macOS and Xcode Dec 29 2018 - AlbrechtS: add documentation option descriptions Apr 29 2021 - AlbrechtS: document macOS "universal apps" build setup Nov 01 2023 - AlbrechtS: improve build instructions for user programs