Is it possible to use vcpkg to build an executable rather than a library?

[perdrix52]

On one platform (macOS) we need to build and ship uchmviewer (q.v.) to display MS format .chm help files.

At present we build this as a step in setting up the build machine, but it would be nice if we could build it using vcpkg as part of our move toward CI/CD

Is this something that can be done, and if so are there any special things that need to be done in the portfile (so that we can locate the executable for example).

[perdrix52]

Well I'm trying it ... - it initially failed with all sorts of odd errors which I managed to fix by doing:

cd ~/vcpkg
git pull
./bootstrap-vcpkg.sh

Here's what I have in my port file.cmake

vcpkg_check_linkage(ONLY_STATIC_LIBRARY)

vcpkg_from_github(
    OUT_SOURCE_PATH SOURCE_PATH
    REPO deepskystacker/uChmViewer
	REF d073ff24655bb28c026fe001a30a8408910f49f8
    SHA512 89ae5cd77ab8415f62c94f1baf42a859d6d77b1059c6453098fa801799a794f02e096ac78dd1ad69ac865be662ac95e6c6018486c95c42e4ea3f62c2aff882d1
    HEAD_REF master
)

set(QTDIR $ENV{QTDIR})
message("EV QTDIR: " ${QTDIR})
set(CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH ${QTDIR} CACHE STRING "") 
set(QT_DIR  CACHE STRING "")
set(Qt6_DIR ${QTDIR} CACHE STRING "")

set(CMAKE_AUTOMOC ON)

set (options
	"-DUSE_WEBENGINE=ON "
	"-DUSE_MACOS_BUNDLE=OFF "
	"-DUSE_GETTEXT=OFF "
	"-DIS_VCPKG_BUILD=ON "
#	"-DUSE_STATIC_CHMLIB=ON "
	"-DCMAKE_OSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET:STRING=13.4 "
)

message ( "****************************************************************" )
message ( "Setting build options: " ${options} )
message ( "****************************************************************" )

vcpkg_cmake_configure(
    SOURCE_PATH "${SOURCE_PATH}"
	OPTIONS ${options}
)

vcpkg_cmake_install()

vcpkg_fixup_pkgconfig()

file(REMOVE_RECURSE "${CURRENT_PACKAGES_DIR}/debug/include")

vcpkg_copy_tools(
        TOOL_NAMES uchmviewer
        AUTO_CLEAN
)
		
vcpkg_install_copyright( FILE_LIST "${SOURCE_PATH}/COPYING" )

and it now builds!

BUT how can I find the uchmviewer binary in my CMake file? I know that it got placed into the vcpkg_installed/tools/uchmviewer directory, but I don't know how to describe that location in my CMake file. Is it just:

${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/vcpkg_installed/tools/uchmviewer/uchmviewer

[perdrix52]

Well that was "Close, but no cigar"

What was actually needed was to copy:
${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/vcpkg_installed/${VCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET}/tools/uchmviewer/uchmviewer

Problem solved.