Learn Running the Executable | Creating and Building Projects

After building your project with CMake, the compiled program is placed inside the build directory, not in your source folder. This is part of the out-of-source build approach, which keeps your project clean and organized.

# project-root/
# ├── CMakeLists.txt
# ├── main.c
# └── build/
#     ├── Makefile
#     ├── cmake_install.cmake
#     ├── CMakeFiles/
#     └── MyApp        (Linux)
#     └── MyApp.exe    (Windows)

The file named MyApp (Linux) or MyApp.exe (Windows) is your compiled program and is ready to run.

Running on Linux

To run the program on Linux, navigate to the build directory and execute it using ./:

cd build
./MyApp

Running on Windows

On Windows, open Command Prompt or PowerShell, move to the build folder, and run:

MyApp.exe

Program Output

If everything works correctly, you should see output similar to:

Hello from CMake!

Note

If your terminal says Permission denied on Linux, make the file executable:

chmod +x MyApp

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Section 2. Chapter 4

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# project-root/
# ├── CMakeLists.txt
# ├── main.c
# └── build/
#     ├── Makefile
#     ├── cmake_install.cmake
#     ├── CMakeFiles/
#     └── MyApp        (Linux)
#     └── MyApp.exe    (Windows)