cclean cleans up cmake's messiest build artifacts.
This is mainly useful for in-source builds. In fact, cmake recommends out of source builds. For cmake projects that use out of source builds, you can simply run cmake -E rm -rf <build directory>. Or, you can script more complex cleanup tasks with the cmake -P scripts.
$ cd example
$ cmake .
$ cmake --build . --target hello
$ tree
.
├── CMakeCache.txt
├── CMakeFiles
...
├── CMakeLists.txt
├── Makefile
├── bin
│ └── hello
├── cmake_install.cmake
└── hello.c
$ cclean
$ tree
.
├── CMakeLists.txt
└── hello.cSee cclean -h for more options.
cclean assists cmake with removing common internal artifacts. This is helpful for freeing up disk space.
cmake often enters a corrupt state, requiring manual intervention. cclean automates the process of resetting cmake back to a clean state.
cclean is particularly helpful for cross-platform workflows. For example, when building the same host directory once in WSL, and then again in PowerShell.
- cclean runs independently of cmake, enabling it to remove sticky cmake artifacts like
.ninja_log - cclean removes custom
-Bbuild directories - cclean wraps the cmake global
cleantarget - cclean removes cached
conanpackages
Like cmake, cclean encourages portable build steps. This enables cmake projects to build more reliably on difference machines.
Configure the cmake global clean target (esp. ADDITIONAL_CLEAN_FILES) carefully, in order to avoid accidents.
Windows users may enjoy cclean with either WSL or host-naive COMSPEC Windows environments (Command Prompt and PowerShell).
However, cmake fails to process ADDITIONAL_CLEAN_FILES when using the MSVC toolchain directly with cmake.
Fortunately, LLVM for Windows provides operational workarounds.
- Install the Clang, such as with the LLVM Chocolatey package.
- Install the GNU make and/or ninja Chocolatey packages.
- Manually clear your cmake project of any existing cmake MSVC artifacts.
- Update any compiler-specific sections of your
CMakeLists.txtbuild configuration, to target clang / clang++, rather than MSVC. - Initialize your cmake project with either the make generator or the Ninja generator:
cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" <build directory>cmake -G Ninja <build directory>
Both of these cmake generator implementations will generally respect the cmake variable ADDITIONAL_CLEAN_FILES. Except when the variable contains an entry for the .ninja_log file, which fortunately cclean knows to automatically remove.
We are interested to hear reports of how cmake and cclean behave when using clang-cl or other generators.
https://crates.io/crates/cclean
https://docs.rs/cclean/latest/cclean/
$ cargo install --force --path .- cmake 3.4+
For more details on developing cclean itself, see DEVELOPMENT.md.
FreeBSD
- git, a distributed version control system
- gitignore.io, community maintained gitignore templates
- make, the classic, plain build system
- ninja, the fast, plain build system
- unmake, a linter for manually written makefiles