[CMake] Cross project include/link pathing?

[Andreas Naumann]

Dear Chris,

your description looks like the perfect example for ExternalProject_add. 
Than, every library would be a project. Inside each library, it looks 
for its dependency using find_package(<libraryProjectName>) and exports 
the dependency chain.
Your CMakeLists.txt of the application than has two possibilities:
     a) simply assume, that the library is installed in a (known) 
location -> use find_package as described above and proceed as is.
     b) build the library as an external project. In this case, your 
application has to be an external project with dependency to the 
external project of the library.

Hope that helps you and describes at least the idea,

Andreas

Am 09.02.2017 um 22:26 schrieb Chris Johnson:
> We've been using CMake for a couple of years for C++ application
> building.  We effectively set up our CMake project structure once, and
> mostly only change it to add new source files, etc.
>
> Currently, all C++ source is checked out of our SVN repository into one
> large tree.  This tree actually contains multiple applications.  Many,
> but not all, depend on libraries which are also in this same source tree
> checkout.  Executables are statically linked to the libraries.
>
> Our source tree has grown to the point where this arrangement really
> does not make sense, and is quite far from best practices.  We want to
> move to a more project-oriented structure, where there will be multiple
> projects, but where the libraries are still shared.
>
> How do I go about this?
>
> In particular, how do I structure each project to find the common,
> shared (but statically linked) libraries?  I would assume that each
> library itself or the collection of libraries would be a project, with a
> top-level CMakeLists.txt file.
>
> Note that each project could be installed in its own unique location in
> its deployed VM or container, so placing the libraries into, say,
> hard-coded /usr/local/lib is not a feasible solution for us.
>
>
> Pictorially (use fixed width font for best results):
> =====================================================
>
> Current single source tree layout
> ---------------------------------
>
> .
> |-- CMakeLists.txt
> |-- application_1/
> |   `-- CMakeLists.txt
> |-- application_2/
> |   |-- CMakeLists.txt
> |   |-- util_1/
> |   |   `-- CMakeLists.txt
> |   |-- util_2/
> |   |   `-- CMakeLists.txt
> |   `-- util_3/
> |       `-- CMakeLists.txt
> `-- lib/
>     |-- CMakeLists.txt
>     |-- lib_1/
>     |   `-- CMakeLists.txt
>     `-- lib_2/
>         `-- CMakeLists.txt
>
>
> Desired project-oriented layout
> -------------------------------
>
> [Application 1 Project]
> .
> `-- CMakeLists.txt
>
> [Application 2 Project]
> .
> |-- CMakeLists.txt
> |-- util_1/
> |   `-- CMakeLists.txt
> |-- util_2/
> |   `-- CMakeLists.txt
> `-- util_3/
>     `-- CMakeLists.txt
>
> [Libraries Project]
> .
> |-- CMakeLists.txt
> |-- lib_1/
> |   `-- CMakeLists.txt
> `-- lib_2/
>     `-- CMakeLists.txt
>
>
>
> Presently, all of the applications know where to find the library header
> files, because they are all in the same tree.  When we run "cmake ." at
> the root of the source checkout, CMake knows where everything is, and
> correctly provides the include paths to C++ compiler.
>
> Similarly, at link time, CMake has automatically determined where the
> compiled static libraries are, and our CMakeLists.txt files only need
> mention them by name.  CMake has been brilliant at making this kind of
> stuff simple.
>
> But how do I make CMake generate the correct include and link paths when
> "cmake ." is run on some individual project's source code, when those
> paths will be outside the current tree, i.e. elsewhere?
>
>
> ..chris
>
>