CMake官方常见问题解答说明:

Some build trees created with GNU autotools have a "make distclean" target that cleans the build and also removes Makefiles and other parts of the generated build system. CMake does not generate a "make distclean" target because CMakeLists.txt files can run scripts and arbitrary commands; CMake has no way of tracking exactly which files are generated as part of running CMake. Providing a distclean target would give users the false impression that it would work as expected. (CMake does generate a "make clean" target to remove files generated by the compiler and linker.) A "make distclean" target is only necessary if the user performs an in-source build. CMake supports in-source builds, but we strongly encourage users to adopt the notion of an out-of-source build. Using a build tree that is separate from the source tree will prevent CMake from generating any files in the source tree. Because CMake does not change the source tree, there is no need for a distclean target. One can start a fresh build by deleting the build tree or creating a separate build tree.

你可以这样使用:

add_custom_target(clean-cmake-files
   COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -P clean-all.cmake
)

// clean-all.cmake
set(cmake_generated ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/CMakeCache.txt
                    ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/cmake_install.cmake
                    ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/Makefile
                    ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/CMakeFiles
)

foreach(file ${cmake_generated})

  if (EXISTS ${file})
     file(REMOVE_RECURSE ${file})
  endif()

endforeach(file)

我通常创建一个“make clean-all”命令，在前面的例子中添加一个调用“make clean”:

add_custom_target(clean-all
   COMMAND ${CMAKE_BUILD_TOOL} clean
   COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -P clean-all.cmake
)

不要尝试将“clean”目标添加为依赖项:

add_custom_target(clean-all
   COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -P clean-all.cmake
   DEPENDS clean
)

因为“干净”在CMake中不是一个真正的目标，这是行不通的。

此外，你不应该使用这个“clean-cmake-files”作为任何东西的依赖:

add_custom_target(clean-all
   COMMAND ${CMAKE_BUILD_TOOL} clean
   DEPENDS clean-cmake-files
)

因为，如果你这样做，所有的CMake文件将在clean-all完成之前被擦除，make将抛出一个搜索“CMakeFiles/clean-all.dir/build.make”的错误。因此，在任何情况下，都不能在"anything"前面使用clean-all命令:

add_custom_target(clean-all
   COMMAND ${CMAKE_BUILD_TOOL} clean
   COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -P clean-all.cmake
)

这也不行。

cmake主要生成一个Makefile文件，可以将rm添加到干净的PHONY文件中。

例如,

[root@localhost hello]# ls
CMakeCache.txt  CMakeFiles  cmake_install.cmake  CMakeLists.txt  hello  Makefile  test
[root@localhost hello]# vi Makefile
clean:
        $(MAKE) -f CMakeFiles/Makefile2 clean
        rm   -rf   *.o   *~   .depend   .*.cmd   *.mod    *.ko   *.mod.c   .tmp_versions *.symvers *.d *.markers *.order   CMakeFiles  cmake_install.cmake  CMakeCache.txt  Makefile

我同意外部构建是最好的答案。但是当你必须在源代码内构建的时候，我写了一个Python脚本，可以在这里使用，它:

运行“make clean” 在顶级目录中删除特定的cmake生成的文件，例如CMakeCache.txt 对于每个包含CMakeFiles目录的子目录，它会删除CMakeFiles, Makefile, cmake_install.cmake。 删除所有空子目录。

当然，外部构建是Unix makefile的首选方法，但如果您使用的是其他生成器，如Eclipse CDT，它更喜欢您构建内源。在这种情况下，您需要手动清除CMake文件。试试这个:

find . -name 'CMakeCache.txt' -o -name '*.cmake' -o -name 'Makefile' -o -name 'CMakeFiles' -exec rm -rf {} +

或者，如果你已经通过shop -s globstar启用了globstar，试试这个不那么恶心的方法:

rm -rf **/CMakeCache.txt **/*.cmake **/Makefile **/CMakeFiles

为此，我使用以下shell脚本:

#!/bin/bash

for fld in $(find -name "CMakeLists.txt" -printf '%h ')
do
    for cmakefile in CMakeCache.txt cmake_install.cmake CTestTestfile.cmake CMakeFiles Makefile
    do
        rm -rfv $fld/$cmakefile
    done
done

如果您使用的是Windows，则使用Cygwin来执行此脚本。