Using CMake to build FLTK. PREREQUISITES The prerequisites for building FLTK with CMake are staightforward: CMake 2.6 or later and a recent FLTK 1.3 snapshot. Installation of CMake is covered on its web site. This howto will cover building FLTK with the default options using cmake under Linux with both the default Unix Makefiles and a MinGW cross compiling toolchain. Other platforms are just as easy to use. OPTIONS All options have sensible defaults so you won't usually need to touch these. There are only two CMake options that you may want to specify. CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE This specifies what kind of build this is i.e. Release, Debug... Platform specific compile/link flags/options are automatically selected by CMake depending on this value. CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX Where everything will go on install. Defaults are /usr/local for unix and C:\Program Files\FLTK for Windows. These are the FLTK specific options. Platform specific options are ignored on other platforms. OPTION_OPTIM Extra optimization flags. OPTION_ARCHFLAGS Extra architecture flags. The OPTION_PREFIX_* flags are for fine-tuning where everything goes on the install. OPTION_PREFIX_BIN OPTION_PREFIX_LIB OPTION_PREFIX_INCLUDE OPTION_PREFIX_DATA OPTION_PREFIX_DOC OPTION_PREFIX_CONFIG OPTION_PREFIX_MAN OPTION_APPLE_X11 - default OFF In case you want to use X11 on OSX. Not currently supported. OPTION_USE_POLL - default OFF Don't use this one either. OPTION_BUILD_SHARED_LIBS - default OFF Normally FLTK is built as static libraries which makes more portable binaries. If you want to use shared libraries, this will build them too. OPTION_BUILD_EXAMPLES - default ON Builds the many fine example programs. OPTION_CAIRO - default OFF Enables libcairo support OPTION_CAIROEXT - default OFF Enables extended libcairo support OPTION_USE_GL - default ON Enables OpenGL support OPTION_USE_THREADS - default ON Enables multithreaded support OPTION_LARGE_FILE - default ON Enables large file (>2G) support FLTK has built in jpeg zlib and png libraries. These let you use system libraries instead, unless CMake can't find them. OPTION_USE_SYSTEM_LIBJPEG - default ON OPTION_USE_SYSTEM_ZLIB - default ON OPTION_USE_SYSTEM_LIBPNG - default ON X11 extended libraries. OPTION_USE_XINERAMA - default ON OPTION_USE_XFT - default ON OPTION_USE_XDBE - default ON BUILDING UNDER LINUX WITH UNIX MAKEFILES After untaring the FLTK source, go to the root of the FLTK tree and type the following. mkdir build cd build cmake .. make sudo make install This will build and install a default configuration FLTK. CROSSCOMPILING Once you have a crosscompiler going, to use CMAke to build FLTK you need two more things. You need a toolchain file which tells CMake where your build tools are. The CMake website is a good source of information on this file. Here's mine for MinGW under Linux. ---- # the name of the target operating system set(CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME Windows) # which tools to use set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER /usr/bin/i486-mingw32-gcc) set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER /usr/bin/i486-mingw32-g++) # here is where the target environment located set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH /usr/i486-mingw32) # adjust the default behaviour of the FIND_XXX() commands: # search programs in the host environment set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_PROGRAM NEVER) # search headers and libraries in the target environment, set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_LIBRARY ONLY) set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_INCLUDE ONLY) set(CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX ${CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH}/usr CACHE FILEPATH "install path prefix") ---- Not too tough. The other thing you need is a native installation of FLTK on your build platform. This is to supply the fluid executable which will compile the *.fl into C++ source and header files. So, again from the FLTK tree root. mkdir mingw cd mingw cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=~/projects/toolchain/Toolchain-mingw32.cmake .. make sudo make install This will create a default configuration FLTK suitable for mingw/msys and install it in the /usr/i486-mingw32/usr tree.