[CMake] libraryname decoration

[Ryan Pavlik]

  On 7/30/10 7:11 AM, Olaf van der Spek wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Ryan Pavlik<rpavlik at iastate.edu>  wrote:
>>> It's a shame gcc doesn't support it yet. I would love to see support
>>> there.
>>>
>>> Olaf
>> The issue conceptually for me here, is that the code shouldn't/doesn't
>> necessarily know what exact library name to link against - think different
>> versions of libraries, different platforms...
> Could you give a concrete example? As, again with Boost, I've never
> seen an issue like this.
see starting at line 272 
http://github.com/rpavlik/vrpn/blob/master/vrpn_Configure.h

>> What ends up happening in
>> projects that rely on those kinds of constructs, is your config system ends
>> up having to configure a file specifying the library names for the pragmas
>> to work, which ends up being more hassle than just handling linking entirely
>> within the build system.  (Plus, then you get the whole "I know exactly what
>> my project links against and uses" benefit.)
>> I use boost a lot.  I've only used its auto-linking by accident, when it
>> guesses the wrong decorated name or wrong location for my platform, at which
>> point I realize I missed a library in my build system.  It ends up being a
>> slightly more convenient "unresolved symbols" error.
> Interesting. What was the cause of this issue?
>
> Olaf
Exactly what I said: when I failed to realize I needed to link a library 
for one of the boost modules I was using.
(If you use the deprecated link_directories command you might not notice 
this as often, but I've learned that it's the wrong thing to do and that 
full library paths passed to the linker are the most reliable.)

-- 
Ryan Pavlik
Human-Computer Interaction Graduate Student
Virtual Reality Applications Center
Iowa State University

rpavlik at iastate.edu
http://academic.cleardefinition.com/