How do I clean up the project files generated by CMake?

Question

I am using CMake to generate the project files.

Is there a command with which I can clean up all those generated project files?

If it's a git repository, `git checkout . & git clean -dxf` will wipe everything clean to exactly the state of your git index. — Brent, Jul 01 '17 at 20:47
I also looked for `cmake clean` command yesterday, found none. But now my question is why are there projects still building in root source folder instead of `build`? :) — Tien Do, Sep 01 '18 at 06:35

score 49 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 13 '19 at 05:11

49

Is there a command with which I can clean up all those generated project files?

Yes - if you do an out-of-source build (as recommended).

To do so, create a directory - for example, build - within your projects directory and run CMake from there:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

(Or tell your IDE to do so.)

Now all generated files are within build. To clean those, just remove the directory (rm -rf build).

PRO: You can keep all generated files out of your versioning system by adding build to its ignore ;-)

edited Feb 13 '19 at 05:11

Peter Mortensen

answered Dec 02 '14 at 16:35

ollo

4

Just for completeness: There's no way to do it automatically in-source, is that correct? – Michael Jul 20 '16 at 08:22
3

if you call cmake from the root directory of your project it's in-source – all build files are then scattered into your project. Doing an out-of-source build will keep them within one place (eg. `build/`). So it's more an issue of how you use cmake. Did i get your question right? – ollo Jul 22 '16 at 18:11

1 Answers1