Question

I have been using CMake with C++ to build libraries and executables and would like to use the same for the go programming language.

What steps do I need to take to configure CMake so it would work with the go programming language?

Essentially, my compiler is 6g which produces a compiled foo.6 – I send it to a linker via 6l foo.6 and I am done. I have the compiler and linker already built and installed.

Obviously, I can just write a simple Makefile for this, but it would be nice to use CMake consistently throughout my project.

TIA for any advice that would help me get started.

Answer 1

You might wish to implement CMake’ support for Go. Roughly speaking it involves following steps:

1. Create CMakeDetermineGoCompiler.cmake module, which would find Go
   compiler for the current system.

2. Create CMakeGoCompiler.cmake.in – a
   template, which would be configured by CMakeDetermineGoCompiler.

3. Create CMakeTestGoCompiler.cmake, module which would compile a
   simple go source to check if the compiler works.

4. Create CMakeGoInformation.cmake, which would set some language-related
   variables (CMAKE_GO_LINK_EXECUTABLE and so on)

These things should be placed in CMAKE_MODULES_DIR. For reference you can take a look at how Java/CXX support is implemented.

Alternatively, if don’t want to mess with such internal stuff, you can solve your task by creating a macro(), which would create a bunch of custom targets/commands (see add_custom_{target,command}() documentation).