[CMake] CMake cannot find cl (VS2008) due to missing manifest file

[Hakim Achterberg]

Dear all,

First of all merry Christmas to everyone!

I am having problems configuring any CMake project, it used to work fine 
until a reboot and I don't know what changed (maybe a windows update, or 
other things) but now I cannot use CMake because it claims "Check for 
working C compiler: cl -- broken".

The thing is that I can compile projects fine with Visual Studio, but 
that with CMake I get the following errors:

Check for working C compiler: cl -- broken

CMake Error at C:/Program Files (x86)/CMake 
2.8/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/CMakeTestCCompiler.cmake:50 (MESSAGE):

The C compiler "cl" is not able to compile a simple test program.


< some less interesting things >

1>Embedding manifest...

1>.\cmTryCompileExec.dir\Debug\cmTryCompileExec.exe.intermediate.manifest :

general error c1010070: Failed to load and parse the manifest. The system

cannot find the file specified.

1>Build log was saved at

"file://c:\dev\fltk\CMakeFiles\CMakeTmp\cmTryCompileExec.dir\Debug\BuildLog.htm"


<etc>

Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!


So after some googling I figured out that I could use the 
-debug-trycompile switch to gain access to the test solution. I tried 
building that, and indeed if fails with that error.

The problem seems to be that the manifest uses:
Output Manifest File: $(IntDir)\$(TargetFileName).embed.manifest

And the linker uses:
Manifest File: $(IntDir)\$(TargetFileName).intermediate.manifest

So there is a manifest file called cmTryCompileExec.exe.embed.manifest, 
but not cmTryCompileExec.exe.intermediate.manifest.

I am not yet familiar with manifest files, but it seems that if I change 
the manifest settings it is possible to get this solution to build 
again. The problem is that CMake keeps creating solutions/project files 
which won't compile. I have no clue why it started doing this. I 
configured and compiled fltk, itk and vtk fine before using CMake/VS. 
Since about 2 days now I can't get any of them configured with CMake.

Some information: about my computer/software:
CMake: 2.8.0
IDE: Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
Windows XP 64-bit edition
Quadcore Xeon proc

Let me know if I forgot to include any information.

Kind regards,
Hakim Achterberg