The CMake tool is used to both to generate projects for your plug-ins and applications, and to build the plug-ins and applications from the projects it generated.

Projects are generated by calling a CMake Generator. A CMakeLists.txt file in the plug-in or application directory provides information about the libraries, files, and source needed to generate the project.

Projects are generated using

cmake -H. -B<build_directory> -G <generator>

The Maya devkit supports three generators:

• Visual Studio 16 2019 Win64 for 64bit Windows

    cmake -H. -Bbuild -G "Visual Studio 16 2019 Win64"
  

• Unix Makefiles for macOS and Linux

    cmake -H. -Bbuild -G "Unix Makefiles"
  

• Xcode for macOS

    cmake -H. -Bbuild -G Xcode
  

The -B flag is used to specify the project file target directory.

For example, to generate an XCode project in the project directory, use

cmake -H. -Bproject -G Xcode

After your project is generated, you can open the project in an IDE and build it from there, or you can use CMake with the --build option to build the plug-in or application

cmake --build <build_directory>

For example, if you generated the project to the project directory, use

cmake --build project/

Your built application or plug-in will be located in the top level of your build directory if you generated your project using Unix Makefiles. If you used the Xcode or Visual Studio 16 2019 Win64 generator, your plug-in or application will be located under the build directory's Debug subdirectory.

Standalone applications are run directly from the command line or from Windows Explorer.

If you set MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH path in Maya.env as described in Setting Up Your Build Environment, you can copy your plug-in to the MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH and it will be loaded automatically into Maya. You can also choose to not place your plug-in in MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH and instead load it manually.