Switching between GCC and Clang/LLVM using CMake

I have a number of projects built using CMake and I'd like to be able to easily switch between using GCC or Clang/LLVM to compile them. I believe (please correct me if I'm mistaken!) that to use Clang I need to set the following:

    SET (CMAKE_C_COMPILER             "/usr/bin/clang")
    SET (CMAKE_C_FLAGS                "-Wall -std=c99")
    SET (CMAKE_C_FLAGS_DEBUG          "-g")
    SET (CMAKE_C_FLAGS_MINSIZEREL     "-Os -DNDEBUG")
    SET (CMAKE_C_FLAGS_RELEASE        "-O4 -DNDEBUG")
    SET (CMAKE_C_FLAGS_RELWITHDEBINFO "-O2 -g")

    SET (CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER             "/usr/bin/clang++")
    SET (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS                "-Wall")
    SET (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG          "-g")
    SET (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_MINSIZEREL     "-Os -DNDEBUG")
    SET (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE        "-O4 -DNDEBUG")
    SET (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELWITHDEBINFO "-O2 -g")

    SET (CMAKE_AR      "/usr/bin/llvm-ar")
    SET (CMAKE_LINKER  "/usr/bin/llvm-ld")
    SET (CMAKE_NM      "/usr/bin/llvm-nm")
    SET (CMAKE_OBJDUMP "/usr/bin/llvm-objdump")
    SET (CMAKE_RANLIB  "/usr/bin/llvm-ranlib")

Is there an easy way of switching between these and the default GCC variables, preferably as a system-wide change rather than project specific (i.e. not just adding them into a project's CMakeLists.txt)?

Also, is it necessary to use the llvm-* programs rather than the system defaults when compiling using clang instead of gcc? What's the difference?

CMake honors the environment variables CC and CXX upon detecting the C and C++ compiler to use:

$ export CC=/usr/bin/clang
$ export CXX=/usr/bin/clang++
$ cmake ..
-- The C compiler identification is Clang
-- The CXX compiler identification is Clang

The compiler specific flags can be overridden by putting them into a make override file and pointing the CMAKE_USER_MAKE_RULES_OVERRIDE variable to it. Create a file ~/ClangOverrides.txt with the following contents:

SET (CMAKE_C_FLAGS_INIT                "-Wall -std=c99")
SET (CMAKE_C_FLAGS_DEBUG_INIT          "-g")
SET (CMAKE_C_FLAGS_MINSIZEREL_INIT     "-Os -DNDEBUG")
SET (CMAKE_C_FLAGS_RELEASE_INIT        "-O3 -DNDEBUG")
SET (CMAKE_C_FLAGS_RELWITHDEBINFO_INIT "-O2 -g")

SET (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_INIT                "-Wall")
SET (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG_INIT          "-g")
SET (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_MINSIZEREL_INIT     "-Os -DNDEBUG")
SET (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE_INIT        "-O3 -DNDEBUG")
SET (CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELWITHDEBINFO_INIT "-O2 -g")

The suffix _INIT will make CMake initialize the corresponding *_FLAGS variable with the given value. Then invoke cmake in the following way:

$ cmake -DCMAKE_USER_MAKE_RULES_OVERRIDE=~/ClangOverrides.txt ..

Finally to force the use of the LLVM binutils, set the internal variable _CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_PREFIX. This variable is honored by the CMakeFindBinUtils module:

$ cmake -D_CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_PREFIX=llvm- ..

Putting this all together you can write a shell wrapper which sets up the environment variables CC and CXX and then invokes cmake with the mentioned variable overrides.

Also see this CMake FAQ on make override files.

System wide C++ change on Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install clang
sudo update-alternatives --config c++

Will print something like this:

  Selection    Path              Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/bin/g++       20        auto mode
  1            /usr/bin/clang++   10        manual mode
  2            /usr/bin/g++       20        manual mode

Then just select clang++.

You can use the toolchain file mechanism of cmake for this purpose, see e.g. here. You write a toolchain file for each compiler containing the corresponding definitions. At config time, you run e.g

 cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/path/to/clang-toolchain.cmake ..

and all the compiler information will be set during the project() call from the toolchain file. Though in the documentation is mentionend only in the context of cross-compiling, it works as well for different compilers on the same system.

You can use the option command:

option(USE_CLANG "build application with clang" OFF) # OFF is the default

and then wrap the clang-compiler settings in if()s:

if(USE_CLANG)
    SET (...)
    ....
endif(USE_CLANG)

This way it is displayed as an cmake option in the gui-configuration tools.

To make it systemwide you can of course use an environment variable as the default value or stay with Ferruccio's answer.

Switching between GCC and Clang/LLVM using CMake

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