Check if generating a Visual Studio solution or Makefile from CMake

Question

How can I know in my CMakeLists.txt if I'm generating a Visual Studio solution or a Makefile?

I need to add external projects to the solution like this:

INCLUDE_EXTERNAL_MSPROJECT(cs-tests ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/cstests/cstests.csproj)

But I only want to do it when calling

cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -G "Visual Studio 12 2013"

not when I call:

cmake -G "NMake Makefiles" ..

Answer 1

CMake MSVC variable can be set even if the generator is other than Visual Studio (e.g. Ninja on Windows).

To check if CMake generator is Visual Studio (i.e. msbuild), the following did the trick:

if (CMAKE_GENERATOR MATCHES "Visual Studio")
    # Do Visual Studio specific stuff
else()
    # Other stuff
endif()

Answer 2

The name of the generator is stored in CMAKE_GENERATOR. It should contain the exact string given by the -G option.

The MSVC variable should also be set to TRUE, as should MSVC12 and MSVC_IDE (though I can't confirm that from the documentation at the moment.)