Automate-VCPKG

While Vcpkg on it's own is awesome, it does add a little bit of complexity to getting a project to build. Even more if the one trying to compile your application is not too fond of the commandline. Additionally, CMake commands tend to get rather long with the toolchain path.

To keep things simple for new users who just want to get the project to build, this script offers a solution.

Lets assume your main CMakelists.txt looks something like this:

cmake_minimum_required (VERSION 3.12.0)
project (MyProject)

add_executable(MyExecutable main.c)

To integrate Vcpkg into that CMakelists.txt, simple put the following lines before the call to project(MyProject):

include(cmake/automate-vcpkg.cmake)

vcpkg_bootstrap()
vcpkg_install_packages(libsquish physfs)

The call to vcpkg_bootstrap() will clone the official Vcpkg repository and bootstrap it. If it detected an existing environment variable defining a valid VCPKG_ROOT, it will update the existing installation of Vcpkg.

Arguments to vcpkg_install_packages() are the packages you want to install using Vcpkg.

If you want to keep the possibility for users to chose their own copy of Vcpkg, you can simply not run the code snippet mentioned above, something like this will work:

option(SKIP_AUTOMATE_VCPKG "When ON, you will need to built the packages 
 required by MyProject on your own or supply your own vcpkg toolchain.")

if (NOT SKIP_AUTOMATE_VCPKG)
  include(cmake/automate-vcpkg.cmake)

  vcpkg_bootstrap()
  vcpkg_install_packages(libsquish physfs)
endif()

Then, the user has to supply the packages on their own, be it through Vcpkg or manually specifying their locations.

Acknowledgments

Automate-VCPKG was based on https://github.com/sutambe/cpptruths/blob/vcpkg_cmake_blog/cpp0x/vcpkg_test/CMakeLists.txt.