[SOLVED] CMAKE avoid compilation of HLSL shader files on Visual Studio

CMAKE avoid compilation of HLSL shader files on Visual Studio

I have a DirectX11 project with CMake on Windows. The project contains (at least) three sub-projects - one is for the core 3D engine library - a common asset directory which contains all the binary data used by the test or sample apps that builds on top of the engine.

./ 
+-- src/
|   +-- api/
|       +-- CmakeLists.txt
+-- tests/
|   +-- assets/
|   |   +-- shaders/
|   |   |   +-- 1.hlsl
|   |   |   +-- 2.hlsl
|   |   |       ...
|   |   +-- images/
|   |   |       ...
|   |   +-- models/
|   |   |       ...
|   |   +-- CmakeLists.txt
|   +-- sampleApp1/
|   |   +-- CmakeLists.txt
|   |        ...
|   +-- sampleApp2 
|   |   +-- CmakeLists.txt
|   |   +-- ...
|   |   ... 
|   +-- CmakeLists.txt
+-- CmakeLists.txt

The asset files are just being copied in relative to the test projects binary dir (${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}) to make them available in relative to their work directory (../assets).

I have hlsl shader files in assets as well. When such files are being added to the project with CMake, VS will treat them as compilable source - obviously - which I wish to avoid, because I want such files to be edited with the IDE and just copy them to the binary folder and use the engine to compile, rather than let VS to do it.

I have tried to set as header file, like another source files that I wish to avoid building, but it seems that something sets them as shader file and overrides this for some reason.

Here is my setup I'm attempting with:

cmake_minimum_required (VERSION 2.6)
project (Project)
subdirs(assets)

In the asset folder I have the following:

file(GLOB_RECURSE FILES *.*)

add_custom_target(assets SOURCES ${FILES})
set_target_properties(assets PROPERTIES FOLDER tests)

# copy static sources 
foreach(_source IN ITEMS ${FILES})

    # this does not work for some reason
    set_source_files_properties(${_source} PROPERTIES HEADER_FILE_ONLY TRUE)

    if (IS_ABSOLUTE "${_source}")
        file(RELATIVE_PATH _source_rel "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}" "${_source}")
    else()
        set(source_rel "${_source}")
    endif()

    get_filename_component(_source_path "${_source_rel}" PATH)
    get_filename_component(_source_name "${_source_rel}" NAME)    
    set(dst_path "${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/${_source_path}")

    file(MAKE_DIRECTORY ${dst_path})

    # -- win32 only
    if (WIN32)
        string(REPLACE "/" "\\" _source "${_source}")
        string(REPLACE "/" "\\" _dest "${dst_path}/${_source_name}")
    else()
        message("win32 required")
    endif(WIN32)

    add_custom_command(
        TARGET assets
        COMMAND copy ${_source} ${_dest}
        DEPENDS ${_source}
    )

endforeach()

I have tried the following method described in this answer, but didn't succeed.

Solution

You can exclude the shaders from the build as shown in this answer, which will prevent the fxc/dxc shader compilers from trying to compile them.

set_source_files_properties(SOURCE ${MY_SHADERS} PROPERTIES VS_SETTINGS "ExcludedFromBuild=true")