Working with an existing nested cmake project

Hello!

Does your root cmakelists.txt  contain add_subdirectory() projects pointing to the actual projects? In this case CLion should see the targets defined in the subprojects.

Also feel free to comment or upvote https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/CPP-1537.

I can build the project using cmake at the command prompt. I normally create a build artifacts directory below the project root and simply enter "cmake ..\". It builds a number of libraries and binaries. The executables are built due to CMakeLists.txt files several levels into the directory structure (under subdirectory blah-core you can see referenced at the bottom of the top-level CMakeLists.txt file). I have tried opening that CMakeFiles.txt file and it doesn't show any configurations and won't build either. Do I have to manually add configurations or something? I thought it would just traverse the tree (thanks to subdirectory lines in the CMakeLists.txt files) and build from the top-level CMakeLists.txt. Are the targets limited to one level of subdirectory or is CLION supposed to crawl the whole tree?

This is my top-level CMakeFiles.txt with the names of my directory structure obfuscated...

make_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5.1)

project(blah LANGUAGES CXX)

# Set default pref to /usr (unless user provided an override)
if(CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX_INITIALIZED_TO_DEFAULT)
set(CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX "/usr" CACHE PATH "..." FORCE)
endif()

set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON)

if(${CMAKE_VERSION} VERSION_LESS "3.12.1")
message("Please consider switching to CMake 3.12.x")
else()
# Enable PACKAGE_ROOT variable for find_package()
cmake_policy(SET CMP0074 NEW)
endif()

set( CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -O2" )

find_package(Boost COMPONENTS program_options REQUIRED)

enable_testing()

set(CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/artifacts CACHE STRING "Choose the installation prefix." FORCE)

# Setup GTest
find_package(GTest)
if(NOT TARGET gtest_main)
# FIXME: Make this friendlier to the cross-build
add_subdirectory(/usr/src/googletest gtest)
endif()

set(CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/artifacts CACHE STRING "Choose the installation prefix." FORCE)

add_subdirectory(dir1)
add_subdirectory(dir2)
add_subdirectory(blah-core)

If there is a top-level CMake file containing add_subdirectory() projects, CLion should create targets defined in the subprojects.

For example, here is our demo project with a similar structure - https://github.com/anastasiak2512/Calendar. If I open the project in CLion, it creates the configurations for targets defined in the subprojects:

Could you please check whether CLion creates the configurations for this demo project on your side?

I'm facing the same problems. CMake won't detect targets for subdirectories nested in existing subdirectories. For example, if the root CMakeLists uses add_subdirectory(calendars), and the CMakeLists uses add_subdirectory(mysubproject), CMake doesn't crawl the subdirectory tree, and won't recognise the targets from /calendars/mysubproject/CMakeLists.txt

pygrum, in the sample project mentioned earlier (https://github.com/anastasiak2512/Calendar):

• the top-level Calendar/CMakeLists.txt file has add_subdirectory(calendars_tests), 
• the Calendar/calendars_tests/CMakeLists.txt file has add_subdirectory(basic_tests), 
• and the Calendar/calendars_tests/basic_tests/CMakeLists.txt file defines the target “runBasicCalendarTests”. 

The “runBasicCalendarTests” target is correctly detected by CLion and the corresponding configuration is automatically created on my side:

Do you observe different behavior if you open https://github.com/anastasiak2512/Calendar in CLion on your side?