How do you run cpack from visual studio?

Question

I am porting some packages from Linux to windows and I've found that visual studio has quite good integration with cmake. I am able to configure and build the project using cmake but I cannot figure out how to run cpack to create the installation package.

This question - How to create an installer with CMake + CPack + NSIS on Windows? - suggests that a PACKAGE.vcxproj file should be created by the build. It is but there doesn't appear to be anyway to build/run it from inside visual studio

It seems a strange oversight as:

cmake integration is very good
ctest tests can be run via the tests menu
the install target can be run via the build menu but there is no menu option to create packages with cpack.

Note I am trying to create ZIP or TGZ package and don't need the extra complication of NSIS at this time. I am using VS2019

Does the PACKAGE project not show up in your Solution Explorer menu? It is often grouped with the other CMake predefined targets (e.g. INSTALL, ZERO_CHECK, etc.) — squareskittles
There are no predefined targets at all in Solution Explorer. Perhaps I need to configure something? — Bruce Adams
Just tried adding the following based on your clue - no effect: set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY USE_FOLDERS ON) set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY PREDEFINED_TARGETS_FOLDER "CMake") — Bruce Adams
Are you using VS folders? (set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY USE_FOLDERS ON)) It is possible that the predefined targets are in a collapsed folder. Without knowing the specifics of how you generated the solution file, it is difficult to say why these pre-defined CMake projects are not showing in your Solution Explorer. There is even a question for how to get rid of them, because they are almost always available. — squareskittles

Bruce Adams Bruce Adams · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-08T12:31:55

The best solution I've come up with is you can't - at least not directly. Someone more enlightened may know better because it does indeed seem a strange oversight.

If you open a commmand prompt from tools/developer command prompt you can run cpack manually from there.

Another important point is that CPACK_PACKAGING_INSTALL_PREFIX should not be set on Windows. See https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/issues/17534

You can improve on this by adding a custom target (or targets) to your CMakeLists.txt which will be visible in the targets view. For example (base on https://cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/2017-January/064830.html) add:

SET( CPACK_OUTPUT_CONFIG_FILE "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/BundleConfig.cmake" )
ADD_CUSTOM_TARGET( bundle
         COMMAND "${CMAKE_CPACK_COMMAND}"
                 "-C" "$<CONFIGURATION>"
            "--config" "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/BundleConfig.cmake"
            COMMENT "Running CPack. Please wait..."
            DEPENDS ${PROJECT_NAME} doxygen)

Doxygen documentation to be included in the install package is an extra dependency in my case.

How do you run cpack from visual studio?

1 Answers