Notes on using CMake

I have something like this in my main CMakeLists.txt file

SET(CMAKE_AUTOMOC ON)
SET(CMAKE_AUTORCC ON)
SET(CMAKE_AUTOUIC ON)

IF(MAC)
    FIND_PACKAGE(Qt6 REQUIRED COMPONENTS Widgets)
ENDIF(MAC)
IF(WIN32)
    FIND_PACKAGE(Qt5 REQUIRED COMPONENTS Widgets)
ENDIF(WIN32)

With Qt installed correctly CMake should just find it 🤞 You can then link in Qt in your target CMakeLists.txt file like this:

TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(${targetname} Qt6::Widgets)

Also, made use of Brew (https://brew.sh) on OSx and vcpkg (https://vcpkg.io) on Windows to install Qt and other libs.

Using VCPKG

vcpkg is a free C/C++ package manager for acquiring and managing libraries. Choose from over 1500 open source libraries to download and build in a single step or add your own private libraries to simplify your build process. Maintained by the Microsoft C++ team and open source contributors.

VCPKG setup in CMAKE file:

# MSVC VCPKG setup (using x64 build)
IF(DEFINED ENV{VCPKG_ROOT} AND NOT DEFINED CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE)
  MESSAGE("Using VCPKG Toolchain")
  SET(CMAKE_GENERATOR_PLATFORM "x64")
  SET(CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE "$ENV{VCPKG_ROOT}/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake" CACHE STRING "")
  SET(VCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET "x64-windows-static")
ENDIF()

Using VCPKG is fairly straightforward, with the following notes:

• The x64-windows-static option above was required to select the specific VCPKG version of QT (with static linking) that I needed.
• You also have to install all your packages with this option, for example: vcpkg install assimp --triplet x64-windows-static
• I had to define VCPKG_ROOT (location on disk of vcpkg install) and add it to the list of system environment variables.