[CMake] Confusion on how find_package works.

[Miguel A. Figueroa-Villanueva]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 5:54 PM, Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> On 14.01.09 15:45:53, Robert Dailey wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Andreas Pakulat wrote:
>>
>> > If you look at the cmake docs, then you'll find out that nothing in there
>> > states that wildcards are allowed. Hence I'd assume that wildcards are not
>> > supported.
>> >
>> > Also you only need to set one of the two for find_path to use the
>> > directory.
>>
>> Well if only the CMake documentation was that reliable. There's information
>> that I have found to be inaccurate or missing from the docs.
>
> So far I haven't found inaccurate information myself, missing yes
> sometimes.
>
>> For example, the documentation for find_package() no where mentions the
>> variable created for the COMPONENTS parameter. Looking at FindBoost.cmake,
>> it appears to be in the form of <prefix>_FIND_COMPONENTS. Is this correct?
>
> Apparently yes, but no idea where I got that from :) Would be good to
> file a bugreport at www.cmake.org as this is indeed missing in the docs.

Well, you can find it in the Modules/readme.txt file. However, the
module user doesn't need to know about the <prefix>_FIND_COMPONENTS
variable. This is for the FindXXX module developer. Also, note that
maybe you find inconsistent the information in the find_package
documentation, because of old or poorly written find modules that do
not work as they should. However, the documentation for CMake in
general is very reliable (although sometimes missing some).

In your case, it seems you need to generate the list of paths to be
searched appropriately (no wildcard) and then use something like this:

find_path(<VAR> NAMES name PATHS ${path_list} NO_DEFAULT_PATH)

That is, if you don't want to search in the standard directories. Make
sure you appropriately handle spaces in directory names and print the
generated list of paths to see where you are searching.

--Miguel