[feature] CMake build helper should allow selection of host=x64 toolset option

When building with CMake and the Visual Studio generator it is necessary to pass the toolset option host=x64 to CMake so that Visual Studio uses the 64bit compiler/linker executables. It is not an implicit choice by VS, it always selects the 32bit executables if not instructed otherwise. Currently we have to configure that in the recipes because Conan does not support this setting in the toolset attribute:

cmake = CMake(self)
args = None
if self.settings.os == "Windows":
  args = ["-T", "host=x64"]
cmake.configure(args=args)

This should be a separate selectable option on the build helper and the default for x86_64 hosts.

Environment Details (include every applicable attribute)

• Windows 10
• Visual Studio 2015
• Conan version: 1.19.2
• Python version: 3.7.2

[jasal82]

I agree, it’s probably not a bug. There should still be a way of selecting the host tool architecture from the profile or the CMake build helper. So that would be the feature request then.

[memsharded]

Hi @cedriclaplace

As your comments have different base from the above, as they are using the new build system integrations, I think it is best if you posted a new issue with this. Also, I would strongly recommend to try to reproduce starting with the conan new hello/0.1 --template=cmake_lib. There might be something missing to opt-in/out into which compiler and linker you invoke, irrespective of the settings one (the host architecture), so I would also recommend to use the --profile:build to specify the architecture of the host, as by default it would make sense to use it. If not enough, then that might mean that we need to add a conf to be able to select this.