[CMake] static library from several subdirectories

[Verweij, Arjen]

Hi,

>> Hopefully I'm misunderstanding you, since otherwise the list would
>contain
>> close to 4000 files.
>
>Well, I don't see a real problem with this. If this makes your files too
>long,
>just separate the setting of these source-variables into separate files.

I would prefer to keep the source listing with the source files, so perhaps I should chain .cmake files from the level where I wish to generate mystaticlib.a. That would make maintaining the source lists easier for inadvertent users. To clarify, the average Fortran77 user (mathematician, physicist, structural engineer etc.) I know usually does not have a computer science background, so usability is a relative big issue.

>> But I took a look at Michael Wild's approach (thanks Tyler) which
>leads me
>> to believe there is no clean way to go about it. I suppose in the
>spirit of
>> his solution I could create a global list of the archives I obtain,
>and
>> feed them to target_link_libraries (myexecutable
>> ${my_global_list_of_archives}) in the same scope where I call
>> add_executable().
>
>If you are creating an executable (I thought you were creating a static
>library as end result), you can just link your executable against all
>these
>static libs.

I am. Well, it's complicated. We provide one big archive to link against, so the core of the program is inside the binary when they define their own routines. There is no point in making it a shared object since it is never shared. Most users will just use the binary we provide.

It just seems that cmake was set up with a different mindset, in which it is frowned upon to create a single library (static or not) composed of multiple source directories. I will try to wrap something around add_subdirectory() and have my_add_subdirectory() take care of propagation of the (127 :) source lists to the parent scope, so I can get a list for add_library(). If that fails perhaps just be satisfied with referencing all source lists explicitly from the top... Any other suggestions very welcome.

Thanks,
Arjen