Re: Adding CMakeLists.txt files

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2021-05-31 18:43:52

Edward Diener wrote:
> If any generator can launch any compiler what is the point of choosing a
> generator ?

Again, the initial purpose of CMake was to generate a collection of
Makefiles that comprise "the build system" of the project. Doing this
manually was sufficiently painful that it caused the development of
"meta build systems" such as autotools, premake, CMake, etc.

So the different generators, in CMake, determine what is generated -
a Makefile, a Visual Studio project, an Xcode project, or a build.ninja
file.

CMake originally didn't have a way to build at all. When it generated
a Makefile, you were supposed to use `make` to build; when it
generated a Visual Studio project, you loaded that in Visual Studio in
order to build.