How to Use CCache with CMake?
As of CMAKE 3.4 you can do:
-DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_LAUNCHER=ccache
It is now possible to specify ccache as a launcher for compile commands and link commands (since cmake 2.8.0). That works for Makefile and Ninja generator. To do this, just set the following properties :
find_program(CCACHE_FOUND ccache)
if(CCACHE_FOUND)
set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY RULE_LAUNCH_COMPILE ccache)
set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY RULE_LAUNCH_LINK ccache) # Less useful to do it for linking, see edit2
endif(CCACHE_FOUND)
It is also possible to set these properties only for specific directories or targets.
For Ninja, this is possible since version 3.4. For XCode, Craig Scott gives a workaround in his answer.
Edit : Thanks to uprego and Lekensteyn's comment, I edited the answer to check if ccache is available before using it as launcher and for which generators is it possible to use a compile launcher.
Edit2: @Emilio Cobos recommended to avoid doing that for the linking part as ccache doesn't improve linking speed and can mess with other types of cache like sccache