How to get the external library (PDAL) running?

[Rick CXX]

Hello,

having problems setting up a console program using the external library pdal (www.pdal.io)
What I did:

New Project, Hello-World main, which runs.

Adding pdal-includes like:

  #include <pdal/Reader.hpp> 

In CodeBlocks:
Added the header and source code files recursively from the pdal dir.
pdal/pdal
pdal/io
pdal/filters
pdal/kernal
pdal/plugins
pdal/vendor

Results building it:

/home/patrick/unifr/pdal/pdal/Stage.hpp|39|fatal error: pdal/Dimension.hpp: No 
such file or directory|

When I try it with cmake (according to the toturial on pdal.io/dev/cmake)
Added a CMakeLists.txt in the project root folder with:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5)

project(PDAL VERSION 2.0.0 LANGUAGES CXX C)
string(TOLOWER ${PROJECT_NAME} PROJECT_NAME_LOWER)

include_directories(${PDAL_INCLUDE_DIRS})
link_directories(${PDAL_LIBRARY_DIRS})

add_definitions(${PDAL_DEFINITIONS})
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-std=c++11")
add_executable(pdal_console main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(pdal_console PRIVATE ${PDAL_LIBRARIES})

(Added the line "include_directories(${/home/patrick/unifr/pdal/})")

which results in: (cmake ok), make:

/home/patrick/unifr/PDALConsole/main.cpp:3:10: fatal error: pdal/Reader.hpp: No such file or directory
 #include "pdal/Reader.hpp" 

I cloned the pdal source code from git.
My directories look as the following:

code root:
/home/patrick/unifr/


/home/patrick/unifr/PDALConsole/ <- my project with a main.cpp
/home/patrick/unifr/pdal/ <-pdal library header/source code

So what I am doing wrong? Problems seems to be connected in telling the compiler where the find the pdal files. I thought the line include_directories($PDAL..) should do the job, I even tried to add the absolute dir path (which didn't help either and should be done, no absolute paths).
I am not used to develop c++ with external source code. Did I do it correct with the pdal-source code .. is that how it is supposed to be done?
(I am in the field of developing quite a lot but not in C++)

My goal is to have an application which used the pdal library for reading and processing point clouds.

Used: ubuntu, CodeBlocks/cmake

Greetings,
Rick

[Repeater]

PDAL_INCLUDE_DIRS

What is the value of that? Where is it written?

[Rick CXX]

Thanks for the reply.

When I add:
message(status, ${PDAL_INCLUDE_DIRS})
Result is:
status,
Seems like it is empty, which explains why the files are not found.

When I check PDAL_FOUND, it is empty too.

According to the tutorial ( https://pdal.io/development/cmake.html ) I thought cmake fills in the variables, as the find_package requires pdal to be there.

So how can I add the dir to that variable, or even better, let it cmake do? The pdal package somehow needs to be known by cmake?

[Repeater]

I'm no CMake expert, but what you're asking is something like "how do I set a Cmake variable"

If you put that into Google, you'll get a lot of pages purporting to explain it.

[Rick CXX]

Ah, ja, I can do that, and I did, with the same result as in adding the library dir
include_directories(${/home/patrick/unifr/pdal/}):

In file included from /home/patrick/unifr/pdal/pdal/Reader.hpp:37:0,
                 from /home/patrick/unifr/PDALConsole/main.cpp:3:
/home/patrick/unifr/pdal/pdal/Stage.hpp:39:10: fatal error: pdal/Dimension.hpp: No such file or directory
 #include <pdal/Dimension.hpp>
          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
CMakeFiles/pdal_console.dir/build.make:62: recipe for target 'CMakeFiles/pdal_console.dir/main.cpp.o' failed
make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/pdal_console.dir/main.cpp.o] Error 1
CMakeFiles/Makefile2:67: recipe for target 'CMakeFiles/pdal_console.dir/all' failed
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/pdal_console.dir/all] Error 2
Makefile:83: recipe for target 'all' failed
make: *** [all] Error 2

The file Dimension.hpp cannot be found here or online at github.com/PDAL/PDAL.
Sounds like it is a problem I need to ask them directly. Will come back with further information, thanks for the help so far.