Abseil comes with a CMake build script (CMakeLists.txt) that can be used on a wide range of platforms ("C" stands for cross-platform.). If you don't have CMake installed already, you can download it for free from http://www.cmake.org/.

CMake works by generating native makefiles or build projects that can be used in the compiler environment of your choice.

For API/ABI compatibility reasons, we strongly recommend building Abseil in a subdirectory of your project or as an embedded dependency.

The recommendations below are similar to those for using CMake within the googletest framework (https://github.com/google/googletest/blob/master/googletest/README.md#incorporating-into-an-existing-cmake-project)

1. If you want to build the Abseil tests, integrate the Abseil dependency Google Test into your CMake project. To disable Abseil tests, you have to pass -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF when configuring your project with CMake.

2. Download Abseil and copy it into a subdirectory in your CMake project or add Abseil as a git submodule in your CMake project.

3. You can then use the CMake command add_subdirectory() to include Abseil directly in your CMake project.

4. Add the absl:: target you wish to use to the target_link_libraries() section of your executable or of your library.
   Here is a short CMakeLists.txt example of a project file using Abseil.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.12)
project(my_project)

set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-std=c++11 -stdlib=libc++ ${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS}")

if(MSVC)
  # /wd4005  macro-redefinition
  # /wd4068  unknown pragma
  # /wd4244  conversion from 'type1' to 'type2'
  # /wd4267  conversion from 'size_t' to 'type2'
  # /wd4800  force value to bool 'true' or 'false' (performance warning)
  add_compile_options(/wd4005 /wd4068 /wd4244 /wd4267 /wd4800)
  add_definitions(/DNOMINMAX /DWIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN=1 /D_CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS)
endif()

add_subdirectory(abseil-cpp)

add_executable(my_exe source.cpp)
target_link_libraries(my_exe absl::base absl::synchronization absl::strings)

Use the -DABSL_RUN_TESTS=ON flag to run Abseil tests. Note that if the -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF flag is passed then Abseil tests will not be run.

You will need to provide Abseil with a Googletest dependency. There are two options for how to do this:

• Use -DABSL_USE_GOOGLETEST_HEAD. This will automatically download the latest Googletest source into the build directory at configure time. Googletest will then be compiled directly alongside Abseil's tests.
• Manually integrate Googletest with your build. See https://github.com/google/googletest/blob/master/googletest/README.md#using-cmake for more information on using Googletest in a CMake project.

For example, to run just the Abseil tests, you could use this script:

cd path/to/abseil-cpp
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DABSL_USE_GOOGLETEST_HEAD=ON -DABSL_RUN_TESTS=ON ..
make -j
ctest

Currently, we only run our tests with CMake in a Linux environment, but we are working on the rest of our supported platforms. See https://github.com/abseil/abseil-cpp/projects/1 and abseil#109 for more information.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of Abseil CMake public targets:

absl::base
absl::algorithm
absl::debugging
absl::flat_hash_map
absl::memory
absl::meta
absl::numeric
absl::strings
absl::synchronization
absl::time
absl::utility