Managing configuration files

Let’s assume the foo executable needs to read a config file named foo.cfg

You may want to:

• Put foo.cfg into version control
• Configure foo.cfg with CMake (maybe the contents of foo.cfg depends on whether you are on windows or on linux ...)

Also, it could be convenient if there was a unique way for the foo executable to find foo.cfg.

A possible solution is to make sure you always have the following layout:

<prefix>
|__ bin
    |__ foo
    etc
    |__ foo
        |__ foo.cfg

And then, to find foo.cfg, you just have to use argv[0] and it always work, whereas you just have built foo, or if is installed.

One way to achieve this with CMake would be to use something like this: (assuming that foo.cfg is in foo/foo.cfg)

qi_create_bin(foo main.cpp)

configure_file(${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/foo.cfg
  ${QI_SDK_DIR}/${QI_SDK_CONF}/foo/foo.cfg
  COPY_ONLY)

qi_install_conf(foo.cfg SUBFOLDER foo)

Right before starting to build, the foo.cfg will be copied by CMake using configure_file into the correct location, and then you can add an install rule to install the file to the correct location.