Looking for a 'cmake clean' command to clear up CMake output

cmake
Bill Cheatham picture Bill Cheatham · Mar 13, 2012 · Viewed 412.6k times · Source

Just as make clean deletes all the files that a makefile has produced, I would like to do the same with CMake. All too often I find myself manually going through directories removing files like cmake_install.cmake and CMakeCache.txt, and the CMakeFiles folders.

Is there a command like cmake clean to remove all these files automatically? Ideally this should follow the recursive structure defined within the current directory's CMakeLists.txt file.

Answer

zsxwing picture zsxwing · Mar 13, 2012

There is no cmake clean.

I usually build the project in a single folder like "build". So if I want to make clean, I can just rm -rf build.

The "build" folder in the same directory as the root "CMakeLists.txt" is usually a good choice. To build your project, you simply give cmake the location of the CMakeLists.txt as an argument. For example: cd <location-of-cmakelists>/build && cmake ... (From @ComicSansMS)

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