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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-15T10:19:16+00:00

I’m trying to have cmake download some files. Is it possible to do this

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I’m trying to have cmake download some files. Is it possible to do this once, when the “Generate” button is pressed? I can only set it up to run each time the configure button is pressed or each time the project is built.

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  1. Editorial Team

    CMakeLists are processed at configure time, so you can’t have it do things at generate time. You could, however, set up a cache variable and use it as a flag to determine if the download should happen or not. Something like:

    if(NOT DOWNLOAD_HAPPENED)
  execute_process( ... do the downloading stuff ... )
  set(DOWNLOAD_HAPPENED TRUE CACHE BOOL "Has the download happened?" FORCE)
endif()

    This will execute the download on first configure and never again (unless the user manually resets the DOWNLOAD_HAPPENED) variable. However, if you really need the download to happen at the last configure, you’re out of luck, AFAIK.

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