Question

tl;dr version:

Is it possible with CMake (>= 2.8) to generate zip files from some files and put the packed zip file in a specific location?

longer version:

I have a CMakeLists.txt that builds my project into a .exe file, and this exe file will read data from a zip file. The content to be packed in the zip file is in my git repository so that it can be edited, too. But, the program needs this data in a zip file. So it would be good if the CMake script could take the data, put it in a zip file, and place it next to the exe. I already heard of CPack, but I did not find any easy examples and am not sure if this is even the right tool for my task.

Is this possible? If yes, how?

Answer 1

For CMake 3.18 or newer use the ARCHIVE_CREATE file command. It supports both the creation of zip and 7zip archives.

For example, if the current CMake source directory contains the file testfile.txt and the directory testdir, you can use the following CMake commands to create a zip file containing both items:

file(ARCHIVE_CREATE
    OUTPUT "archive.zip"
    PATHS 
        "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/testfile.txt"
        "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/testdir"
    FORMAT "zip")

For earlier versions of CMake (3.2 – 3.17) use the CMake command-line mode sub-command tar instead:

add_custom_target(create_zip COMMAND
    ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E tar "cfv" "archive.zip" --format=zip
       "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/testfile.txt"
       "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/testdir")

For CMake versions earlier than 3.2, you can use the jar command that is part of a standard Java JRE installation.

find_package(Java)

execute_process(
    COMMAND
        "${Java_JAR_EXECUTABLE}" "cfM" "archive.zip" 
        "-C" "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}" "testfile.txt" 
        "-C" "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}" "testdir"
    RESULT_VARIABLE _result
)

The zip file will be generated in the current CMake binary dir (CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR).