CMake and Conan: past, present and future - Diego Rodriguez-Losada - Meeting C++ 2023

CMake and Conan: past, present and future - Diego Rodriguez-Losada - Meeting C++ 2023

From legacy variable-based dependencies to Common Package Specification (CPS)

CMake and Conan have been continuously evolving since their origin. Specifically, dependency management in CMake has evolved from using variables defined in find modules, to using usage requirements in imported targets defined in config files. More recently, toolchain files, CMake presets, the new CMake dependency providers and the preliminary work towards a Common Package Specification (CPS) are creating new integration possibilities. In parallel to this, the Conan package manager and CMake integrations have also greatly changed over years to provide an improved and transparent CMake integration and better developer experience.

This talk will quickly review the past approaches, their pitfalls, and how modern CMake and Conan integrations have improved over them:

From variables, to targets, to transparent targets integration with modern Conan generators
Better separation of concerns to align binary configurations using CMake toolchains
Improving the developer experience with CMake presets

The new CMake-Conan integration using CMake’s new dependency providers feature for transparent installation of dependencies

The talk will finalize with an overview of ongoing work over a Common Package Specification (CPS) proposal, how CMake and Conan already have early partial implementations, and it will finish summarizing future steps.

[dmitryyudin]

Very informative talk. Thank you soo much!

[richjohnson]

I hope to see more example and tutorial resources for conan v2 and cmake on the web. It seems lacking at this time. I really struggle to get a new project started. For example, bringing Fakeit into my project is a challenge perhaps because it is a header-only. Not sure.

[GaryOberbrunner]

Is there a repo with the demo you're giving in this talk? I'm trying to set up a new project using conan2 and cmake with cmake as the driver, but cannot figure out how to make a single "cmake" command work like in your first demo.