Creating precompiled headers with cmake
What are precompiled headers?
They are a partially processed version of header files, this speeds up compilation because it doesn't have to repeatedly parse the original header.
How to use it
The way to do it is to pass the header files you want precompiled to the target_precompile_headers command.
Imagine this folder structure:
.
├── CMakeLists.txt
└── src
├── header.h
└── main.cpp
1 directory, 3 files
Now we create a very basic CMakeLists.txt:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)
project(MyProject)
set(HEADER_FILES
src/header.h)
set(SOURCE_FILES
src/main.cpp
${HEADER_FILES}
)
include_directories(src)
add_executable(MyProject ${SOURCE_FILES})
Notice we require a minimum cmake version of 3.16, this is due to target_precompile_headers being added in that version.
We add the command after the add_executable instruction to the private scope.
It's recommended to use the private scope to prevent precompiled headers appearing in an installed target, consumers should decide whether they want to use precompiled headers or not.
target_precompile_headers(MyProject PRIVATE ${HEADER_FILES})
When compiling you can see now that it indeed compiles the headers:
Scanning dependencies of target MyProject
[ 33%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/MyProject.dir/cmake_pch.hxx.gch
[ 66%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/MyProject.dir/src/main.cpp.o
[100%] Linking CXX executable MyProject
[100%] Built target MyProject
