Compiling with CMake and scikit-build-core

CMake is a popular build system, with support for multiple languages, including C, C++, and Cuda. scikit-build-core is the official adaptor for using CMake for a Python package.

Therefore the combination of CMake and scikit-build-core is a good choice if you’re wrapping or using a C/C++ library that uses CMake heavily. But equally they can be used in their own right, independent of any external dependencies.

scikit-build-core

If you want to use scikit-build-core then their docs provides a simple, minimal example of how to build a Cython module. There is an official Cython plugin, cython-cmake.

Like most Python build backends, you need a pyproject.toml file to define the project metadata and set up the build backend:

[build-system]
requires = ["scikit-build-core", "cython", "cython-cmake"]
build-backend = "scikit_build_core.build"

[project]
name = "example"
version = "1.0.0"

The majority of the logic to build your package is in CMakeLists.txt:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.21...4.0)
project(${SKBUILD_PROJECT_NAME} LANGUAGES C)

find_package(
  Python
  COMPONENTS Interpreter Development.Module
  REQUIRED)
include(UseCython)

cython_transpile(example.pyx LANGUAGE C OUTPUT_VARIABLE example_c)

python_add_library(example MODULE ${example_c} WITH_SOABI)
install(TARGETS example DESTINATION .)

Install your package by running pip install ..