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I'm trying make a Visual Studio solution with CMake to compile the latest version of aseprite and CMake keeps giving me the:

No CMAKE_C_COMPILER could be found.
No CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER could be found.

I've already downloaded GCC, and I'm using Visual Studio 2015.

I'm following this tutorial:

https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/blob/master/INSTALL.md

You can configure project either for Visual studio with its compiler or for Makefiles with gcc. What method you have tried? – Tsyvarev Sep 26, 2015 at 20:52 Are you using the latest CMake? What generator did you use? Did you run the commands from the Visual Studio 2015 command prompt (so it has the compiler environment variables set)? – drescherjm Sep 27, 2015 at 7:53 @bames53 Just wanted to add to corresponding command lines for @Caio Fontes to try: cmake .. -G "Visual Studio 14 2015" or cmake .. -G "MSYS Makefiles" (if gcc means MinGW). And I've seen those questions a lot (like here, here, or here) and I'm thinking we are missing a combined/tutorial answer on SO. – Florian Sep 28, 2015 at 9:12 I did that for Ubuntu but it triggers the error "the CXX compiler identification is unknown" – Pablo Mar 8, 2022 at 3:14
CMake Error at ... (project):
    No CMAKE_C_COMPILER could be found.
-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also ".../CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log".
See also ".../CMakeFiles/CMakeError.log".
CMake Error: your CXX compiler: "CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER-NOTFOUND" was not found.
Please set CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER to a valid compiler path or name.
-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!

just mean that CMake was unable to find your C/CXX compiler to compile a simple test program (one of the first things CMake tries while detecting your build environment).

The steps to find your problem are dependent on the build environment you want to generate. The following tutorials are a collection of answers here on Stack Overflow and some of my own experiences with CMake on Microsoft Windows 7/8/10 and Ubuntu 14.04.

Preconditions

  • You have installed the compiler/IDE and it was able to once compile any other program (directly without CMake)

  • You e.g. may have the IDE, but may not have installed the compiler or supporting framework itself like described in Problems generating solution for VS 2017 with CMake or How do I tell CMake to use Clang on Windows?
  • You have the latest CMake version

  • You have access rights on the drive you want CMake to generate your build environment

  • You have a clean build directory (because CMake does cache things from the last try) e.g. as sub-directory of your source tree

    Windows cmd.exe

      > rmdir /s /q VS2015
      > mkdir VS2015
      > cd VS2015
    

    Bash shell

      $ rm -rf MSYS
      $ mkdir MSYS
      $ cd MSYS
    

    and make sure your command shell points to your newly created binary output directory.

    General things you can/should try

  • Is CMake able find and run with any/your default compiler? Run without giving a generator

     > cmake ..
     -- Building for: Visual Studio 14 2015
    

    Perfect if it correctly determined the generator to use - like here Visual Studio 14 2015

  • What was it that actually failed?

    In the previous build output directory look at CMakeFiles\CMakeError.log for any error message that make sense to you or try to open/compile the test project generated at CMakeFiles\[Version]\CompilerIdC|CompilerIdCXX directly from the command line (as found in the error log).

    CMake can't find Visual Studio

  • Try to select the correct generator version:

     > cmake --help
     > cmake -G "Visual Studio 14 2015" ..
    
  • If that doesn't help, try to set the Visual Studio environment variables first (the path could vary):

     > "c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"
     > cmake ..
    

    or use the Developer Command Prompt for VS2015 short-cut in your Windows Start Menu under All Programs/Visual Studio 2015/Visual Studio Tools (thanks at @Antwane for the hint).

    Background: CMake does support all Visual Studio releases and flavors (Express, Community, Professional, Premium, Test, Team, Enterprise, Ultimate, etc.). To determine the location of the compiler it uses a combination of searching the registry (e.g. at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[Version];InstallDir), system environment variables and - if none of the others did come up with something - plainly try to call the compiler.

    CMake can't find GCC (MinGW/MSys)

  • You start the MSys bash shell with msys.bat and just try to directly call gcc

     $ gcc
     gcc.exe: fatal error: no input files
     compilation terminated.
    

    Here it did find gcc and is complaining that I didn't gave it any parameters to work with.

    So the following should work:

     $ cmake -G "MSYS Makefiles" ..
     -- The CXX compiler identification is GNU 4.8.1
     $ make
    

    If GCC was not found call export PATH=... to add your compilers path (see How to set PATH environment variable in CMake script?) and try again.

  • If it's still not working, try to set the CXX compiler path directly by exporting it (path may vary)

     $ export CC=/c/MinGW/bin/gcc.exe
     $ export CXX=/c/MinGW/bin/g++.exe
     $ cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" ..
     -- The CXX compiler identification is GNU 4.8.1
     $ mingw32-make
    

    For more details see How to specify new GCC path for CMake

    Note: When using the "MinGW Makefiles" generator you have to use the mingw32-make program distributed with MinGW

  • Still not working? That's weird. Please make sure that the compiler is there and it has executable rights (see also preconditions chapter above).

    Otherwise the last resort of CMake is to not try any compiler search itself and set CMake's internal variables directly by

     $ cmake -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/c/MinGW/bin/gcc.exe -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/c/MinGW/bin/g++.exe ..
    

    For more details see Cmake doesn't honour -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++ and Cmake error setting compiler

    Alternatively those variables can also be set via cmake-gui.exe on Windows. See Cmake cannot find compiler

    Background: Much the same as with Visual Studio. CMake supports all sorts of GCC flavors. It searches the environment variables (CC, CXX, etc.) or simply tries to call the compiler. In addition it will detect any prefixes (when cross-compiling) and tries to add it to all binutils of the GNU compiler toolchain (ar, ranlib, strip, ld, nm, objdump, and objcopy).

    Just as a heads up, some of the cmake docs links point to a really old version of CMake, remember to use the version selector to match what version you have on your computer (e.g., if you don't see a newer platform listed that you need). – jrh Nov 7, 2019 at 21:06

    This happened to me after I installed Visual Studio 15 2017.

    The C++ compiler for Visual Studio 14 2015 was not the problem. It seemed to be a problem with the Windows 10 SDK.

    Adding the Windows 10 SDKs to Visual Studio 14 2015 solved the problem for me.

    See attached screenshot.

    I also experienced this error when working with CMake:

    No CMAKE_C_COMPILER could be found.
    No CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER could be found.
    

    The 'warning' box in the MSDN library article Visual C++ in Visual Studio 2015 gave me the help that I needed.

    Visual Studio 2015 doesn't come with C++ installed by default. So, creating a new C++ project will prompt you to download the necessary C++ components.

    I ran into this issue while building libgit2-0.23.4. For me the problem was that C++ compiler & related packages were not installed with VS2015, therefore "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" file was missing and Cmake wasn't able to find the compiler.

    I tried manually creating a C++ project in the Visual Studio 2015 GUI (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe) and while creating the project, I got a prompt to download the C++ & related packages.

    After downloading required packages, I could see vcvarsall.bat & Cmake was able to find the compiler & executed successfully with following log:

    C:\Users\aksmahaj\Documents\MyLab\fritzing\libgit2\build64>cmake ..
    -- Building for: Visual Studio 14 2015
    -- The C compiler identification is MSVC 19.0.24210.0
    -- Check for working C compiler: C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual        
    Studio 14.0/VC/bin/cl.exe
    -- Check for working C compiler: C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual  
    Studio 14.0/VC/bin/cl.exe -- works
    -- Detecting C compiler ABI info
    -- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
    -- Could NOT find PkgConfig (missing:  PKG_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE)
    -- Could NOT find ZLIB (missing:  ZLIB_LIBRARY ZLIB_INCLUDE_DIR)
    -- zlib was not found; using bundled 3rd-party sources.
    -- LIBSSH2 not found. Set CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH if it is installed outside of 
    the default search path.
    -- Looking for futimens
    -- Looking for futimens - not found
    -- Looking for qsort_r
    -- Looking for qsort_r - not found
    -- Looking for qsort_s
    -- Looking for qsort_s - found
    -- Looking for clock_gettime in rt
    -- Looking for clock_gettime in rt - not found
    -- Found PythonInterp: C:/csvn/Python25/python.exe (found version "2.7.1")
    -- Configuring done
    -- Generating done
    -- Build files have been written to:    
    C:/Users/aksmahaj/Documents/MyLab/fritzing/libgit2/build64
                    This worked for me. Manually creating a C++ project to install the necessary packages did the trick.
    – Melaz
                    Dec 28, 2016 at 18:03
    

    I had the same errors with CMake. In my case, I have used the wrong Visual Studio version in the initial CMake dialog where we have to select the Visual Studio compiler.

    Then I changed it to "Visual Studio 11 2012" and things worked. (I have Visual Studio Ultimate 2012 version on my PC). In general, try to input an older version of Visual Studio version in the initial CMake configuration dialog.

    For me, this problem went away on Windows when I moved my project to a shallower parent directory, i.e. to:

    C:\Users\spenc\Desktop\MyProjectDirectory

    instead of

    C:\Users\spenc\Desktop\...\MyProjectDirectory.

    I think the source of the problem was that MSBuild has a file path length restriction to 260 characters. This causes the basic compiler test CMake performs to build a project called CompilerIdCXX.vcxproj to fail with the error:

    C1083: Cannot open source file: 'CMakeCXXCompilerId.cpp'

    because the length of the file's path e.g.

    C:\Users\spenc\Desktop\...\MyProjectDirectory\build\CMakeFiles\...\CMakeCXXCompilerId.cpp

    exceeds the MAX_PATH restriction.

    CMake then concludes there is no CXX compiler.

    Make sure you have selected the correct version of Visual Studio. This is trickier than it seems because Visual Studio 2015 is actually Visual Studio 14, and similarly Visual Studio 2012 is Visual Studio 11. I had incorrectly selected Visual Studio 15 which is actually Visual Studio 2017, when I had 2015 installed.

    You are most welcome! I also had to try a lot of things to finally come to this solution. The other solutions were too complex and was not really the issue. – Grejo Joby Jun 3, 2022 at 3:53

    None of the solutions here solves my problem - only when I install Windows Update for universal C runtime.

    Now CMake is working and no more link hangs from Visual Studio.

    Update for Universal C Runtime in Windows

    Just in case it helps any one like me in future:

    I have had this issue for 24 hours now, on 3 different 64-bit machines(Win7 , Windows 8.1 VM and WIn 8.1 laptop) - whilst trying to build WebKit with VS 2017.

    The simple issue here is that the VC++ compiler (i.e cl.exe and it's dependent DLLs) is not visible to CMake. Simple. By making the VC++ folders containing those binaries visible to CMake and your working command prompt(if you're running Cmake from a command prompt), voila! (In addition to key points raised by others , above)

    Anyway, after all kinds of fixes - as posted on these many forums- I discovered that it was SIMPLY a matter of ensuring that the PATH variable's contents are not cluttered with multiple Visual Studio BIN paths etc; and instead, points to :

    a) the location of your compiler (i.e. cl.exe for your preferred version of Visual Studio ), which in my case(targeting 64-bit platform, and developing on a 64-bit host) is: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.15.26726\bin\Hostx64\x64

    b) and in addition, the folder containing a dependent DLL called (which cl.exe is dependent on): api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll - which on my machine is:

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x64

    These two directories being added to a simplified and CUSTOM System Path variable(working under a Admin priviledged commmand prompt), eliminated my "No CMAKE_C_COMPILER could be found" and "No CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER could be found." errors.

    Hope it helps someone.

    I get exactly the reported error if ccache is enabled, when using CMake's Xcode generator. Disabling ccache fixed the problem for me. Below I present a fix/check that works for MacOS, but should work similarly on other platforms.

    Apparently, it is possible to use CMake's Xcode generator (and others) also in combination with ccache, as is described here. But I never tried it out myself.

    # 1) To check if ccache is enabled:
    echo $CC
    echo $CXX
    # This prints something like the following: 
    #     ccache clang -Qunused-arguments -fcolor-diagnostics. 
    # CC or CXX are typically set in the `.bashrc` or `.zshrc` file.
    # 2) To disable ccache, use the following:
    CC=clang
    CXX=clang++
    # 3) Then regenerate the cmake project
    cmake -G Xcode <path/to/CMakeLists.txt>
                    I was able to resolve the same issue by making sure the output of "xcode-select -p" points to my Xcode installation. In my case installing Xcode and running "xcode-select -r" was enough.
    – TomTasche
                    Feb 9, 2019 at 11:09
    

    I know this question is about visual studio 2015. I faced this issue with visual studio 2017. When searched on google I landed to this page. After looking at first 2,3 answers I realized this is the problem with vc++ installation. Installing the workload "Desktop development with c++" resolved the issue.

    This solution was required at my place at work after they pushed a Windows OS update. I have used at least 2 of the solutions on this page to fix the error. The error can crop up in any number of conditions, so this is why there are several different, yet workable, answers. – Natalie Cottrill Aug 25, 2018 at 17:11

    I had the same issue with cmake-gui (No CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER could be found.), while running CMake from the command line worked fine. After manually adding the entries

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\bin

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\MSBuild\15.0\Bin

    to the PATH environment variable it worked for me.

    I had the same problem.

    I was trying to install dlib on my machine and it gave me this error. The tutorial mentioned in the question leads to downloading visual studio 2017. I solved this by uninstalling VS 2017 and installing VS 2015

    One can install VS 2015 via this stackoverflow thread : How to download Visual Studio Community Edition 2015 (not 2017)

    Look in the Cmakelists.txt if you find ARM you need to install C++ for ARM

    It's these packages:

    C++ Universal Windows Platform for ARM64 "Not Required"

    Visual C++ Compilers and libraries for ARM "Not Required"

    Visual C++ Compilers and libraries for ARM64 "Very Likely Required"

    Required for finding Threads on ARM 
    enable_language(C) 
    enable_language(CXX)
    

    Then the problems

    No CMAKE_C_COMPILER could be found.

    No CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER could be found.

    Might disappear unless you specify c compiler like clang, and maybe installing clang will work in other favour.

    You can with optional remove in cmakelists.txt both with # before enable_language if you are not compiling for ARM.

    On M1 Mac, add the following config to fix it for me

     -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER="${OTHER_CXX_FLAG}" -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER="/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/clang" -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER="/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/clang++"
    

    The config result is:

       cmake ../build -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER="${OTHER_CXX_FLAG}" -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER="/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/clang" -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER="/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/clang++" -DCMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME=Darwin -DCMAKE_TARGET_SYSTEM=mac -GXcode
    
  •