ROOT

ROOT is a C++ Toolkit for High Energy Physics. It is huge. There are really a lot of ways to use it in CMake, though many/most of the examples you'll find are probably wrong. Here's my recommendation.

Most importantly, there are lots of improvements in CMake in more recent versions of ROOT - try to use 6.14+!

Finding ROOT

ROOT 6.10+ supports config file discovery, so you can just do:

import:'find_package', lang:'cmake'

to attempt to find ROOT. If you don't have your paths set up, you can pass -DROOT_DIR=$ROOTSYS/cmake to find ROOT. (But, really, you should source thisroot.sh).

The too-simple way

ROOT provides a utility to set up a ROOT project, which you can activate using include("${ROOT_USE_FILE}"). This will automatically make ugly directory level and global variables for you. It will save you a little time setting up, and will waste massive amounts of time later if you try to do anything tricky. As long as you aren't making a library, it's probably fine for simple scripts. Includes and flags are set globally, but you'll still need to link to ${ROOT_LIBRARIES} yourself, along with possibly ROOT_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS (You will have to separate_arguments first before linking or you will get an error if there are multiple flags, like on macOS).

Here's what it would look like:

import:'main', lang:'cmake'

The right way (Targets)

ROOT 6.12 and earlier do not add the include directory for imported targets. ROOT 6.14+ has corrected this error. To fix this error for older ROOT versions, you'll need something like:

import:'setup_includes', lang:'cmake'

You will also often want the compile flags and definitions:

import:'setup_flags', lang:'cmake'

In CMake 3.11, you can replace that last function call with:

import:'modern_fix', lang:'cmake'

All the ROOT targets will require ROOT::Core, so this will be enough regardless of which ROOT targets you need.

To link, just pick the libraries you want to use:

import:'add_and_link', lang:'cmake'

Components

Find ROOT allows you to specify components. It will add anything you list to ${ROOT_LIBRARIES}, so you might want to build your own target using that to avoid listing the components twice. This does not solve dependencies though; so it is an error to list RooFit but not RooFitCore. If you link to ROOT::RooFit instead of ${ROOT_LIBRARIES}, then RooFitCore is not required.

Dictionary generation

Dictionary generation is ROOT's way of working around the missing reflection feature in C++. It allows ROOT to learn the details of your class so it can save it, show methods in the Cling interpreter, etc. You'll need three things in your source code to make it work for classes:

Your class definition should end with ClassDef(MyClassName, 1)
Your class implementation should have ClassImp(MyClassName) in it
You should have a file with a name that ends with LinkDef.h

The LinkDef.h file follows a specific formula and tells ROOT what parts to generate dictionaries for.

To generate, you should include the following in your CMakeLists:

include("${ROOT_DIR}/modules/RootNewMacros.cmake")
include_directories(ROOT_BUG)

The second line is due to a bug in the NewMacros file that causes dictionary generation to fail if there is not at least one global include directory or a inc folder. Here I'm including a non-existent directory just to make it work. There is no ROOT_BUG directory.

To generate a file:

root_generate_dictionary(G__Example Example.h LINKDEF ExampleLinkDef.h)

The final argument, listed after LINKDEF, must have a name that ends in LinkDef.h. This command will create three files. If you started output name with G__, that will be removed from the name, otherwise it will use the name given; this must match the final output library name you will soon be creating. Assuming this is ${NAME}:

${NAME}.cxx: This file should be included in your sources when you make the library.
lib{NAME}.rootmap (G__ prefix removed): The rootmap file in plain text
lib{NAME}_rdict.pcm (G__ prefix removed): A ROOT file

The final two output files must sit next to the library output. This is done by checking CMAKE_LIBRARY_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY (it will not pick up local target settings). If you have a libdir set but you don't have (global) install locations set, you'll also need to set ARG_NOINSTALL to TRUE.

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