CMake: how to specify the version of Visual C ++ to work?

Question

I have several versions of Visual Studio (2010, 2012, 2015).

How can I get CMake to generate makefiles for a specific version of VS? By default, it generates for VS2015.

Answer 1

You can first check that generators your version of CMake supports (and what they are called):

> cmake.exe --help ... The following generators are available on this platform: ... Visual Studio 11 2012 [arch] = Generates Visual Studio 2012 project files. Optional [arch] can be "Win64" or "ARM". ... 

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Then you can give the generator

• cmake.exe -G "Visual Studio 11" .. (short name)
• cmake.exe -G "Visual Studio 11 2012" .. (full name)

I prefer later, because of its clarity. And I usually call in the shell script:

 @ECHO off IF NOT EXIST "BuildDir\*.sln" ( cmake -H"." -B"BuildDir" -G"Visual Studio 11 2012" ) cmake --build "BuildDir" --target "ALL_BUILD" --config "Release" 

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The full name is passed to the internal cached variable name CMake CMAKE_GENERATOR . So the above calls are equivalent

3. cmake -DCMAKE_GENERATOR="Visual Studio 11 2012" ..

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This gives us an interesting opportunity. If you put a file called PreLoad.cmake parallel to the main CMakeLists.txt file, you can force the default (if available) to take for your project there

4. cmake.exe ..

   PreLoad.cmake

    if (NOT "$ENV{VS110COMNTOOLS}" STREQUAL "") set(CMAKE_GENERATOR "Visual Studio 11 2012" CACHE INTERNAL "Name of generator.") endif() 

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Sometimes you may need to add the -T <toolset-name> or -A <platform-name> parameter as well:

5. cmake.exe -G "Visual Studio 10" -T "v90" ..

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And last but not least, if you are really only interested in the compiler

6. "\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"

   cmake.exe -G "NMake Makefiles" ..

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References

• CMake Command Line
• What is the default CMake generator on Windows?
• CMake: in what order are the files processed (Cache, Toolchain, ...)?
• How can I create a Visual Studio 2012 project targeted to Windows XP using CMake?

Answer 2

 cmake -G "Visual Studio 12" ..\MyProject