What is CMake telling me (error on Windows)?

Question

I don't consider myself new to CMake, but I cannot get it working on a newer Windows machine I've acquired. The only generator that works for me is an actual visual studio project generator (e.g. "Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64"). I've tried a couple of recent versions of CMake (3.12.2, 3.10.3) and always get the below when I try another generator (NMake Makefiles JOM, NMake Makefiles, CodeBlocks - NMake Makefiles, etc). I should add that I'm running this command-line in a VS2015 x64 Native Tools Command Prompt window opened as Administrator.

D:\Projects\build-QWar-newest>cmake -G "NMake Makefiles JOM" ../QWar

Error log:

Determining if the C compiler works failed with the following output:
Change Dir: D:/Projects/build-QWar-newest/CMakeFiles/CMakeTmp

Run Build Command:"jom" "/NOLOGO" "cmTC_8b88c\fast"
jom: parallel job execution disabled for Makefile

    C:\Qt\Tools\QtCreator\bin\jom.exe -f CMakeFiles\cmTC_8b88c.dir\build.make /nologo -L CMakeFiles\cmTC_8b88c.dir\build

Building C object CMakeFiles/cmTC_8b88c.dir/testCCompiler.c.obj

    C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~1.0\VC\bin\amd64\cl.exe @C:\Users\Rich\AppData\Local\Temp	estCCompiler.c.obj.19968.0.jom

testCCompiler.c

Linking C executable cmTC_8b88c.exe

    "C:\Program Files\CMake\bin\cmake.exe" -E vs_link_exe --intdir=CMakeFiles\cmTC_8b88c.dir --manifests  -- C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~1.0\VC\bin\amd64\link.exe /nologo @CMakeFiles\cmTC_8b88c.dir\objects1.rsp @C:\Users\Rich\AppData\Local\Temp\cmTC_8b88c.exe.19968.375.jom

MT: command "mt /nologo /manifest CMakeFiles\cmTC_8b88c.dir/intermediate.manifest /out:CMakeFiles\cmTC_8b88c.dir/embed.manifest /notify_update" failed (exit code 0x0) with the following output:
The system cannot find the file specifiedjom: D:\Projects\build-QWar-newest\CMakeFiles\CMakeTmp\CMakeFiles\cmTC_8b88c.dir\build.make [cmTC_8b88c.exe] Error 2

jom: D:\Projects\build-QWar-newest\CMakeFiles\CMakeTmp\Makefile [cmTC_8b88c\fast] Error 2

This is a simple project - here's the CMakeLists.txt from D:\Projects\QWar:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0)

project(QWar)

set(CMAKE_INCLUDE_CURRENT_DIR ON)
set(CMAKE_AUTOMOC ON)

find_package(Qt5Core CONFIG REQUIRED)

add_executable(${PROJECT_NAME}
    main.cpp
    Card.cpp
    Deck.cpp
    Player.cpp
    Round.cpp
    Game.cpp)

target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} Qt5::Core)

EDIT: reformatting error log

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I've gotten this to work with older versions of CMake, in fact I have another machine with Qt5.7/CMake3.6.1 and what I try above works.

user_1470533 · Answer

The solution, thanks to Gregor at kitware, is to make sure 'mt.exe' is in the system path. It comes with the Windows SDK that is installed separately from Visual Studio.

The error above doesn't specifically call out mt as the missing file. After running cmake with the -debug-trycompile I could run the temporary build myself and the error became more clear. Without using -debug-trycompile, when the compiler test fails it removes the temporary files it produced by default.

What is CMake telling me (error on Windows)?

1 Answers