7 CMake is a cross-platform, open-source build system generator.
8 For full documentation visit the `CMake Home Page`_ and the
9 `CMake Documentation Page`_. The `CMake Community Wiki`_ also
10 references useful guides and recipes.
12 .. _`CMake Home Page`: https://cmake.org
13 .. _`CMake Documentation Page`: https://cmake.org/documentation
14 .. _`CMake Community Wiki`: https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/community/wikis/home
16 CMake is maintained and supported by `Kitware`_ and developed in
17 collaboration with a productive community of contributors.
19 .. _`Kitware`: http://www.kitware.com/cmake
24 CMake is distributed under the OSI-approved BSD 3-clause License.
25 See `Copyright.txt`_ for details.
27 .. _`Copyright.txt`: Copyright.txt
43 Other UNIX-like operating systems may work too out of the box, if not
44 it should not be a major problem to port CMake to this platform.
45 Please post to the `CMake Discourse Forum`_ to ask if others have
46 had experience with the platform.
48 .. _`CMake Discourse Forum`: https://discourse.cmake.org
50 Building CMake from Scratch
51 ---------------------------
53 UNIX/Mac OSX/MinGW/MSYS/Cygwin
54 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
56 You need to have a C++ compiler (supporting C++11) and a ``make`` installed.
57 Run the ``bootstrap`` script you find in the source directory of CMake.
58 You can use the ``--help`` option to see the supported options.
59 You may use the ``--prefix=<install_prefix>`` option to specify a custom
60 installation directory for CMake. Once this has finished successfully,
61 run ``make`` and ``make install``.
63 For example, if you simply want to build and install CMake from source,
64 you can build directly in the source tree::
66 $ ./bootstrap && make && sudo make install
68 Or, if you plan to develop CMake or otherwise run the test suite, create
69 a separate build tree::
71 $ mkdir cmake-build && cd cmake-build
72 $ ../cmake-source/bootstrap && make
77 There are two ways for building CMake under Windows:
79 1. Compile with MSVC from VS 2015 or later.
80 You need to download and install a binary release of CMake. You can get
81 these releases from the `CMake Download Page`_. Then proceed with the
82 instructions below for `Building CMake with CMake`_.
84 2. Bootstrap with MinGW under MSYS2.
85 Download and install `MSYS2`_. Then install the required build tools::
87 $ pacman -S --needed git base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc
89 and bootstrap as above.
91 .. _`CMake Download Page`: https://cmake.org/download
92 .. _`MSYS2`: https://www.msys2.org/
94 Building CMake with CMake
95 -------------------------
97 You can build CMake as any other project with a CMake-based build system:
98 run the installed CMake on the sources of this CMake with your preferred
99 options and generators. Then build it and install it.
100 For instructions how to do this, see documentation on `Running CMake`_.
102 .. _`Running CMake`: https://cmake.org/runningcmake
104 To build the documentation, install `Sphinx`_ and configure CMake with
105 ``-DSPHINX_HTML=ON`` and/or ``-DSPHINX_MAN=ON`` to enable the "html" or
106 "man" builder. Add ``-DSPHINX_EXECUTABLE=/path/to/sphinx-build`` if the
107 tool is not found automatically.
109 .. _`Sphinx`: http://sphinx-doc.org
114 If you have found a bug:
116 1. If you have a patch, please read the `CONTRIBUTING.rst`_ document.
118 2. Otherwise, please post to the `CMake Discourse Forum`_ and ask about
119 the expected and observed behaviors to determine if it is really
122 3. Finally, if the issue is not resolved by the above steps, open
123 an entry in the `CMake Issue Tracker`_.
125 .. _`CMake Issue Tracker`: https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/issues
130 See `CONTRIBUTING.rst`_ for instructions to contribute.
132 .. _`CONTRIBUTING.rst`: CONTRIBUTING.rst