How to Config Cmake for Strip File

How to config cmake for strip file

Cleanest possible way is to modify CFLAGS or CXXFLAGS (depending on C or C++ code)

set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS_RELEASE "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS_RELEASE} -s")
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE} -s")

But there is one more hack if you do not want to change your build system (figuring out exact place where to put above lines might be tricky). You may just use strip as standalone application, like:

strip -s a.out

and do this after executable is ready to release as a post-build step. I found this way cleaner, then disturbing compiler flags.

CMake: Platform independent binary stripping for release builds

In CMake add_custom_command can execute post build commands such as strip. The PROJECT_NAME variable is defined as your target binary e.g.

# Set the project name
set(PROJECT_NAME "MyProject")
project(${PROJECT_NAME})

Place the following code after add_executable of your CMakeLists.txt:

# Strip binary for release builds
add_custom_command(TARGET ${PROJECT_NAME} POST_BUILD
    COMMAND $<$<CONFIG:release>:${CMAKE_STRIP} ${PROJECT_NAME}>)

CMAKE_STRIP is the file path to the platform's strip utility (e.g. /usr/bin/strip on Linux). The $<$<CONFIG:cfg>:str> generator expression will expand to str when building the configuration cfg, and to an empty string otherwise. In this scenario, this directly means "call strip when building in Release, and do nothing otherwise". Note that the CONFIG generator is case insensitive on your build type, and will work when using multi-config generators.

How to strip file extensions with cmake (or any other portable build tool)?

If you don't treat these script files as CMake targets, and instead treat them as files, you should be able to do:

project (Mixed Example)

add_executable (banana banana.cpp)
add_executable (grape grape.hs)

install (TARGETS banana grape DESTINATION bin)
if (UNIX)
  install (FILES orange.py DESTINATION bin RENAME orange)
  install (FILES strawberry.lua DESTINATION bin RENAME strawberry)
else (WIN32)
  install (FILES orange.py strawberry.lua DESTINATION bin)
endif ()

If you want to use a function rather than calling install (FILES ... multiple times, you can do:

function (install_files)
  if (UNIX)
    foreach (file ${ARGV})
      get_filename_component (name_without_extension ${file} NAME_WE)
      install (FILES ${file} DESTINATION bin RENAME ${name_without_extension})
    endforeach ()
  else (WIN32)
    install (FILES ${ARGV} DESTINATION bin)
  endif ()
endfunction ()

install (TARGETS banana grape DESTINATION bin)
install_files (orange.py strawberry.lua)

why is cmake producing a binary with debug_info and not stripped

there are some issues with setting flags in CMakeLists.txt, so adding and using a toolchain file helped, and setting appropriate CMAKE_<LANG>_FLAGS_<CONFIG>_INIT vars in the toolchain file. also, the linker is adding debug info. adding -s flag to cmake release flags, and adding -Wl,--strip-debug to linker flags is what i was looking for

here is my final CMakeLists.txt and toolchain files

#CMakeLists.txt
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.22)

# set toolchain file
set(CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/toolchain.cmake"
    CACHE PATH "Path to the desired toolchain file.")

# project name
project(c-program C)

add_executable(c-program c-program.c)

# toolchain.cmake
# CMake toolchain file

# c compiler and standard
set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER "/usr/bin/gcc")
set(CMAKE_C_STANDARD "90")
set(CMAKE_C_STANDARD_REQUIRED YES)

# linker flags
set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS_INIT "-Wl,--strip-debug")

# cflags
set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS_INIT "-ansi -Wall")

# cflags for debug build
set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS_DEBUG_INIT "-g3 -ggdb3")

# cflags for release build
set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS_RELEASE_INIT "-O3 -DNDEBUG -s")

How to strip trailing whitespace in CMake variable?

This strips terminating newline in the variable <varname>:

string(REGEX REPLACE "\n$" "" <varname> "${<varname>}")

Works for one of the project I involved to since CMake 2.8.

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