How to configure cmake for msys2

Question

I'm using external cmake with msys2, since cmake-gui provided by msys2 won't run (invalid win32 application). Now the problem is there's only so much I can configure using cmake-gui. I downloaded OpenALSoft today and when I ran make install it installed to C:\Program Files (x86)\. How do I configure external cmake to install into mingw32 or mingw64 depending on what's running? On top of that, I'm having a problem differentiating between PATH RPATH and PREFIX (and how those correspond to msys2 install structure), so if you could, please, clarify those too, I'd really appreciate that.

Answer 1

I always use this invocation to make sure the install directory is set to /mingw32 or /mingw64:

MSYS2_ARG_CONV_EXCL=- cmake . -G"MSYS Makefiles" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$MINGW_PREFIX

And then when you want to install the built project, you must do this:

make install DESTDIR=/

All of this trickiness is due to the fact that CMake is a native Windows program that does not understand MSYS2-style paths like /, and MSYS2 has some automatic conversions of paths that happen when it detects you are running a native Windows program like CMake.

By the way, MSYS2's cmake-gui works for me, so maybe you should try reinstalling the CMake package in MSYS2 or something. However, I expect my answer to work for both the external CMake and the one in MSYS2.