Question

is there a method to link specific files so that I can reference them inside my code?
I am developing a project where I’m reading in a video file from within my code and I want to reference it like:

const char* videopath = "myvideo.avi"

CMake usually builds inside a newly created directory so that the relative path is unknown to me. Current workaround is to reference the video file as an absolute path like:

videopath = "/home/NewProggie/Video/myvideo.avi"

I was wondering if there is a better way doing this, using CMake?

Answer 1

Check CONFIGURE_FILE!

In CMakeLists.txt:

INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES(
  ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}
  ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}
)
SET(MY_AVI_PATH "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/movies/foo.avi")
CONFIGURE_FILE(${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/avi.h.in ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/avi.h @ONLY)

In avi.h.in:

#pragma once
#define MY_AVI_PATH L"@MY_AVI_PATH@"

The result avi.h:

#pragma once
#define MY_AVI_PATH L"c:\foo\dir\movies\file.avi"