[CMake] Using CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX in custom install command fails with CPack

[Domen Vrankar]

2017-02-09 12:08 GMT+01:00 Martin Craig <martin.craig at eng.ox.ac.uk>:

> Hi, got this problem which I've boiled down to a simple test case. My
> source dir contains just one file (realfile) and the installation should
> install this in bin and make a symlink from linkfile to it. This is the
> CMakeLists.txt file:
>
>     cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.0)
>
>     INSTALL(FILES realfile DESTINATION bin)
>     INSTALL(CODE "execute_process(COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E
> create_symlink realfile ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/bin/linkfile)")
>

You could do it in two separate steps and without absolute path:

execute_process(COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E create_symlink
../../some_relative_path/bin/realfile linkfile) # at this point path
doesn't need to point to the location of existing file
install(FILES ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/linkfile DESTINATION
some_relative_path COMPONENT libraries)

Not certain which CPack package generator you're using but in case of
CPackRPM there is quite some automated handling of symlink paths (even
support for symlinks in relocatable rpm packages).

In this file are some examples of using symlinks in combination with
CPackRPM (never checked how they behave with other CPack package generators
though...):

https://cmake.org/gitweb?p=cmake.git;a=blob;f=Tests/CPackComponentsForAll/CMakeLists.txt;h=344084317166ff4f62850ed77807af2647db6d6a;hb=HEAD

Side note - during packaging CPACK_PACKAGING_INSTALL_PREFIX is used instead
of CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX.

Regards,
Domen
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://public.kitware.com/pipermail/cmake/attachments/20170209/ef14210b/attachment.html>