cmake-checker is a tool to search for violations to 'modern' cmake rules.

usage: __main__.py [-h] [--warn-only] [--reporter {console,junit}]
                        [-o OUTPUT_FILE] [--whitelist WHITELIST]
                        PATH [PATH ...]

positional arguments:
  PATH                  Path to the file or directory where the checks should
                        be done

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --warn-only           Program will return 0 even if violations are found
  --reporter {console,junit}
                        Specify type of reporter to output
  -o OUTPUT_FILE, --output-file OUTPUT_FILE
                        Output results to file with given name
  --whitelist WHITELIST
                        Whitelist file with rules to ignore certain files or
                        dirs (.gitignore style)

• file(GLOB ...)

  • CMake will not track the dependencies of a new file on disk correctly. If no CMakeLists.txt file changes when a source is added or removed then the generated build system cannot know when to ask CMake to regenerate.
  • You can't ensure that only files you want are added. Globbing may pick up stray files that you do not want.

• Functions

  • add_compile_options
  • add_compile_definitions
  • link_libraries
  • add_definitions
  • include_directories

  Functions work on directory scope instead of target scope. Every single one of listed functions has equivalent for target scope which should be used.

• Properties COMPILE_<LANG>_FLAGS

  These properties should be set for a target - not modified globally

• Closing commands with clauses

  • endif
  • endfunction
  • endmacro
  • endforeach

  Example:

  macro(foo ...)
  ...
  endmacro(foo)
  

• Set/unset including

  • ENV
  • CACHE

• ../.. in target_sources function

• Set/unset PARENT_SCOPE outside of function declaration

If you need to disable for any specific reasons checks you can do it using:

# cmake-check disable
...
# cmake-check enable