The remote system does not have CMake 3.8 or greater

Question

1. Introduction to the problem

I'm trying to create a MacOS app that prints a "Hello World" in C++ using Visual Studio 2022 (latest release 17.2.0) on Windows and the CMake template so I can connect remotely (using SSH) to the MacOS, I've been following this official Microsoft tutorial

2. Problem ocurred

The problem is that when I get to the installation step of CMake in MacOS I can't get it to recognize the version of MacOS installed since when I open the project in Windows I get this following message in the console:

1> Copying files to the remote machine.
1> Starting copying files to remote machine.
1> Finished copying files (elapsed time 00h:00m:00s:650ms).
1> CMake generation started for configuration: 'macos-debug'.
1> Found cmake executable at /Users/maria/.vs/cmake/bin/cmake.
1> The remote system does not have CMake 3.8 or greater. An infobar to automatically deploy CMake to the remote system will be displayed if you are building on a supported architecture. See https://aka.ms/linuxcmakeconfig for more info.

It also shows the following message above:

Supported CMake version is not present on 'remote address'. Install  latest CMake binaries from CMake.org? Yes No

And when I press "yes", it says that I actually have cmake installed on the remote MacOS:

1> Copying files to the remote machine.
1> Starting copying files to remote machine.
1> Finished copying files (elapsed time 00h:00m:00s:650ms).
1> CMake generation started for configuration: 'macos-debug'.
1> Found cmake executable at /Users/maria/.vs/cmake/bin/cmake.
1> The remote system does not have CMake 3.8 or greater. An infobar to automatically deploy CMake to the remote system will be displayed if you are building on a supported architecture. See https://aka.ms/linuxcmakeconfig for more info.
CMake binary deployment to the remote machine started. CMake generation will continue automatically after deployment finishes.

CMake binary deployment to the remote machine failed: Installation directory '/Users/maria/.vs/cmake' already exists.

3. Solution attemps

I have tried to install CMake using brew (latest version available 3.23.1) and making sure that cmake was accessible directly from the MacOS terminal (included in PATH), I also tried doing the procedure following the official guide by installing the image .dmg by copying the "CMake.app" to "/Applications" and adding it to the path using the following command:

export PATH=/Applications/CMake.app/Contents/bin:$PATH

And I even tried to install older versions of CMake (like 3.8.0 or 3.8.1) but the same thing still happened. The expected result is the same as the Microsoft guide shown here:

1> Copying files to the remote machine.
1> Starting copying files to remote machine.
1> Finished copying files (elapsed time 00h:00m:00s:650ms).
1> CMake generation started for configuration: 'macos-debug'.
1> Found cmake executable at /Applications/CMake.app/Contents/bin/cmake.
1> /Applications/CMake.app/Contents/bin/cmake -G "Ninja"  DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE_STRING="Debug" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
1> [CMake] -- Configuring done
1> [CMake] -- Generating done
1> [CMake] -- Build files have been written to: /Users/cti/.vs/CMakeProject90/out/build/macos-debug
1> Extracted CMake variables.
1> Extracted source files and headers.
1> Extracted code model.
1> Extracted includes paths.
1> CMake generation finished.

Does anyone know why this is happening or what could be the solution to this problem?

Answer 1

I have finally solved the problem, I had to copy the files located within the CMake application: /Applications/CMake.app/Contents/bin/cmake to the location where Visual Studio was trying to find them, which in my case was: /Users/maria/.vs/cmake/bin/cmake

The version was not a problem since I tried it with the latest CMake version (3.23.1) and it worked. Finally I found a problem related to the lack of indication of the locations of the compilers for C++ and C for CMake and the location of Ninja, I simply specified it inside CMakePresets.json and I had no major problems:

    {
        "name": "macos-debug",
        "displayName": "macOS Debug",
        "generator": "Ninja",
        "binaryDir": "${sourceDir}/out/build/${presetName}",
        "installDir": "${sourceDir}/out/install/${presetName}",
        "cacheVariables": {
          "CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE": "Debug",
          "CMAKE_C_COMPILER": "/usr/bin/gcc",
          "CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER": "/usr/bin/g++",
          "CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM": "/usr/local/bin/ninja"
        },
        "condition": {
            "type": "equals",
            "lhs": "${hostSystemName}",
            "rhs": "Darwin"
        },
        "vendor": {
            "microsoft.com/VisualStudioRemoteSettings/CMake/1.0": {
                "sourceDir": "$env{HOME}/.vs/$ms{projectDirName}"
            }
        }
    }

I hope someone will find this a helpful solution when developing on MacOS with Visual Studio (on Windows)