CMake examples in Xcode

[sudara]

Digging into CMake for the first time. Very excited about it, but had some questions about the Xcode project the example config produces.

I’m hoping to use CMake on CI and would like to use the built Xcode project locally, however it’s a bit cluttered with the default config it seems:

1. The example CMake projects in the JUCE repo don’t add headers ( PluginEditor.h and PluginProcessor.h) to target_sources — not sure if this is intentional, but without listing them there, they don’t show up in Xcode for me, so I assume it’s an omission?

2. Headers and Source are output into two separated folders — is this trivial to change? I’d like to have my source organized the way Projucer had it / the way it’s in source control.

3. Is there a way to stick all the juce prefixed .mm and .h files in a subfolder to get them out of the way?

Thanks for any pointers!

[denvercoder9]

New to CMake as well, but from what ive seen the source files list should really only contain source files (.cpp) that get compiled. If you want your header file to be found by xcode without providing the path to it in your include statement, you can add the directory it is in as an include directory:

target_include_directories(YOUR_TARGET PUBLIC
    DirectoryYourHeaderIsIn/
)

im on linux but I dont have all those juce module files in my source directory, not sure but that could be due to the way you are including juce in your cmake lists. How have you included it? Are you using cmake to find the library or have you got a juce subdirectory and are using add_subdirectory? It also could just be the way the xcode generator works. Like I said im on linux so im not too sure.

[sudara]

Hey there!

My CMakeLists.txt is here:

sudara/pamplejuce/blob/main/CMakeLists.txt

Which is essentially a derivative of the JUCE example for an Audio Plugin plus a few things I ran into on the forum.

@denvercoder9

you can add the directory it is in as an include directory:

Thanks! That’s helpful, my next step is to look into customizing things beyond the example config.

@denvercoder9

It also could just be the way the xcode generator works.

Yeah… I’m mainly wondering if the example CMakeLists.txt are just not (yet?) optimized for Xcode or if I’m missing something / my expectations are off…

Appreciate the reply!

[denvercoder9]

So looking at your cmake list, you have enabled module source groups. The api docs say this:

JUCE_ENABLE_MODULE_SOURCE_GROUPS

This option controls whether dummy targets are added to the build, where these targets contain all of the source files for each module added with juce_add_module(s). If you’re planning to use an IDE and want to be able to browse all of JUCE’s source files, this may be useful. However, it will increase the size of generated IDE projects and might slow down configuration a bit. If you enable this, you should probably also add set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY USE_FOLDERS YES) to your top level CMakeLists, otherwise the module sources will be added directly to the top level of the project, instead of in a nice ‘Modules’ subfolder.

In your cmake file you commented out the use folders set_property, so it looks like thats why the modules are all being added at the top level. Try uncommenting that and see if the modules get placed in their own folder:

set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY USE_FOLDERS YES)
option(JUCE_ENABLE_MODULE_SOURCE_GROUPS "Show all module sources in IDE projects" ON)

[sudara]

Hey sorry @denvercoder9 — Apparently I left the github version of the repo in a messy state while I was troubleshooting. I caught this right after posting, but you were too quick! It’s updated now to the original config I wanted.

I tried building with and without JUCE_ENABLE_MODULE_SOURCE_GROUPS (blowing away the builds folder in between) as well as with and without the USE_FOLDERS in attempts to understand what was happening… no luck…

[sudara]

I tried to use source_group(TREE) as described here so that I can have CMake output source groups that mimic my actual source (my goal): https://cliutils.gitlab.io/modern-cmake/chapters/features/ides.html

However, not having much luck getting anything to show up that way. Next stop is looking into the cmake utils that juce provides, I think…

[sudara]

Followup on cleaning up the IDE presentation.

In the end I took an approach similar to what Tracktion’s pluginval does and have a more usable IDE-friendly xcode build with:

set(SourceFiles
	Source/PluginEditor.h
	Source/PluginProcessor.h
	Source/PluginEditor.cpp
	Source/PluginProcessor.cpp)

target_sources(Pamplejuce PRIVATE ${SourceFiles})
source_group(TREE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/Source PREFIX Source FILES ${SourceFiles})

This still felt pretty messy, so I’ve manually moved all the other targets into a folder called “Targets”:

# https://cliutils.gitlab.io/modern-cmake/chapters/features/ides.html
set_property(TARGET Pamplejuce_AU PROPERTY FOLDER "Targets")
set_property(TARGET Pamplejuce_AUv3 PROPERTY FOLDER "Targets")
set_property(TARGET Pamplejuce_VST3 PROPERTY FOLDER "Targets")
set_property(TARGET Pamplejuce_All PROPERTY FOLDER "Targets")
set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY PREDEFINED_TARGETS_FOLDER "Targets")
set(CMAKE_SUPPRESS_REGENERATION true) # No ZERO_CHECK

I did this manually because set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY PREDEFINED_TARGETS_FOLDER "Targets") doesn’t seem to work (or is maybe overridden by JUCEUtils.cmake)?

Looking better:

Next up I plan on looking into:

1. Consolidating/nesting/removing the “Source Files” and “Header Files” directories. These seem to be default cmake groupings but I haven’t figured out if it would require changes to JUCEUtils.cmake
2. Setting some scheme options by default, for example having the AudioPluginHost being the executable: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/prop_tgt/XCODE_GENERATE_SCHEME.html
3. Figuring out if I can remove the module schemes that get added when JUCE_ENABLE_MODULE_SOURCE_GROUPS is on.