Linking freetype with cmake

c++, cmake, dynamic-linking, freetype

Solution

To load a module like `FindFreetype.cmake` you need to use it in cmake with the `find_package`-command. The first argument is the package name. The "Find" of its corresponding filename is added automatically by cmake.

While `include` might work with `find_package` you can add some flags. For example, as shown below, `REQUIRED`, to make cmake fail when freetype wasn't found.

Additionally linking with cmake should be done with the command `target_link_libraries`.

This is how I would write you CMakeLists.txt:

cmake_minimum_required (VERSION 2.6)
project (FreetypeTutorials1)

find_package(Freetype REQUIRED)

SET(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-O2 -std=c++11")

SET(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "-v")

add_executable( demo src/main.cpp) # CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR is implicit here
target_link_libraries(demo ${FREETYPE_LIBRARIES})
target_include_directories(demo PRIVATE ${FREETYPE_INCLUDE_DIRS})

`target_link_libraries` is platform independent whereas `'-lfreetype` in `CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS` is not.

The CMakeLists.txt will work on other platforms where freetype is available.

(Edit 2019: use `target_include_directories()` instead of `include_directories()`

Problem

I'm having troubles with linking `freetype 2` under linux using `cmake` when building a C++11 project with an `extern C` library. With cmake and freetype 2 I basically have 2 options : - use the utility `freetype-config` like `freetype-config --libs` - use the `FindFreetype` cmake module Now I'm trying to implement the second option and I'm not very skilled with `cmake` nor I understand the logic of it. My problem is the linking phase, I have no idea how to do that properly plus this module is not as complete as the result of `freetype-config --libs` which really includes all the libraries and flags that I need, and not just the path of a file; so I'm assuming that I have to do the same for `zlib` and `libpng`. `CMakeLists.txt` ``` cmake_minimum_required (VERSION 2.6) project (FreetypeTutorials1) include(FindFreetype) include_directories(${FREETYPE_INCLUDE_DIRS}) SET(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-O2 -std=c++11") SET(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "-v -lfreetype") add_executable( demo "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/src/main.cpp") ``` `./src/main.cpp` ( just some random code so I have something to feed to the compiler ) ``` extern "C" { #include <ft2build.h> #include FT_FREETYPE_H } #include <iostream> int main() { FT_Library library; auto error = FT_Init_FreeType(&library); if (error) { std::cout << "An error !\n"; } } ```

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