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Asked: 2026-05-26T01:06:13+00:00

How do I achieve the following in CMake (using version 2.8.5)? I have documentation

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How do I achieve the following in CMake (using version 2.8.5)? I have documentation generated by a custom target named doc, the output of which I would like to include when installing or CPack’ing.

add_custom_target( doc "${DOXYGEN_EXECUTABLE}" Doxyfile )
install( DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/doc DESTINATION doc )

The Doxyfile tells Doxygen to put out the documentation at ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/doc.

If I do this in the build directory:

make doc
cpack

things works fine, because the first line creates the directory on which the install target depends.

However, if I have a fresh build (so ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/doc does not exist yet), and I invoke CPack directly:

cpack

then it complains that it cannot find ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/doc:

CMake Error at <snip>/build/cmake_install.cmake:36 (FILE):
  file INSTALL cannot find "<snip>/build/doc".

I have also tried the following:

add_custom_command( OUTPUT ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/doc COMMAND ${DOXYGEN_EXECUTABLE} ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/Doxyfile )
install( DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/doc DESTINATION doc )

but I still get the same CPack error, and doing make doc in the build directory does not work either.

So if I do the make doc manually before cpack it works with the configuration at the top of this post, but how can I tell cmake/cpack that the install directive depends on the custom target doc, so that building the documentation happens automatically when calling cpack or make install?

Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Probably you need ALL keyword:

    add_custom_target( doc ALL "${DOXYGEN_EXECUTABLE}" Doxyfile )

    Update:

    Currently cmake does not provide an option to add custom dependencies to its built-in targets (such as all, install, test, etc). And it seems that it will not provide this option in near future – see http://public.kitware.com/Bug/view.php?id=8438

    However it is still possible to achieve desired behavior with some hacks/workarounds. For example you can directly run make tool at the beginning of install step.

    So use on your own risk:

    add_custom_target(hack ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E echo "Hacking install target")
if("${CMAKE_GENERATOR}" MATCHES Make)
    install(CODE "execute_process(COMMAND ${CMAKE_BUILD_TOOL} hack WORKING_DIRECTORY \"${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}\")")
endif()
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