CMake: how to specify the version of Visual C++ to work with?

Question

I have multiple versions of Visual Studio installed (2010, 2012, 2015 trial).

How can I force CMake to generate the makefiles for a specific VS version? By default i

Answer 1

First you can check what generators your CMake version does support (and how they are named):

> cmake.exe --help
...
The following generators are available on this platform:
...
  Visual Studio 11 2012 [arch] = Generates Visual Studio 2012 project files.
                                 Optional [arch] can be "Win64" or "ARM".    
...

---

Then you can give the generator with

1. cmake.exe -G "Visual Studio 11" .. (short name)
2. cmake.exe -G "Visual Studio 11 2012" .. (full name)

I prefer the later, because of its clarity. And I normally have this call in a build script wrapper:

@ECHO off
IF NOT EXIST "BuildDir\*.sln" (
    cmake -H"." -B"BuildDir" -G"Visual Studio 11 2012"
)
cmake --build "BuildDir" --target "ALL_BUILD" --config "Release"

---

The full name is transferred to an internal cached CMake variable name CMAKE_GENERATOR. So the above calls are equivalent to

3. cmake -DCMAKE_GENERATOR="Visual Studio 11 2012" ..

---

This gives us an interesting possibility. If you place a file called PreLoad.cmake parallel to your main CMakeLists.txt file you can force the default (if available) to take for your project there

4. cmake.exe ..

   PreLoad.cmake

   if (NOT "$ENV{VS110COMNTOOLS}" STREQUAL "")
       set(CMAKE_GENERATOR "Visual Studio 11 2012" CACHE INTERNAL "Name of generator.")
   endif()
   

---

Sometimes you may need to add also -T <toolset-name> or -A <platform-name> option:

5. cmake.exe -G "Visual Studio 10" -T "v90" ..

---

And last but not least if you are really only interested in the compiler

6. "\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"

   cmake.exe -G "NMake Makefiles" ..

---

References

• CMake command line
• What is the default generator for CMake in Windows?
• CMake: In which Order are Files parsed (Cache, Toolchain, …)?
• How can I generate a Visual Studio 2012 project targeting Windows XP with CMake?

Answer 2

cmake -G "Visual Studio 12" ..\MyProject