MantisBT - CMake

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Date Submitted

Last Update

0015222

CMake

public

2014-10-28 08:08

2016-06-10 14:31

Reporter

Charles Karney

Assigned To

Kitware Robot

Priority

normal

Severity

feature

Reproducibility

always

Status

closed

Resolution

moved

Platform

OS Version

Product Version

CMake 3.0.2

Target Version

Fixed in Version

Summary

0015222: Need a way to determine when features were introduced into cmake

Description

Authors of cmake scripts face a challenge ensuring that their scripts
are portable. This is exacerbated by

* cmake is constantly evolving (which is good!);

* their cmake scripts are run by a diverse set of users (also good!);

* authors have little control over the version of cmake that end-users
  have installed;

* the relationship with end-users is even more tenuous with the
  package-config scripts (which are not read by the builder of the
  package but by a developer using the package).

There is cmake_minimum_required, but authors would normally not want to
set this to too recent a version.

The problem is that it's difficult to know when a particular feature
appeared in cmake. There's no single changelog (and the format of the
changelog doesn't make it easy to search in). Frequently I'm left doing
a binary search in the documentation! Sometimes I need install old
versions to check their behavior.

For example I just noticed that install (TARGET ...) also an INCLUDES
DESTINATION option. This seemed like a feature I should be using until
I noticed that it only appeared in 2.8.12 (or thereabouts).

Suggestions:

* Have a developer mode where cmake behaves as though it were at the
  version given by cmake_minimum_required. (Probably this is
  unfeasible?)

* In the documentation, specify when each command, command option,
  variable, etc., was introduced. (Might junk up the documentation.)

* Split this information off into a separate document. (My favored
  solution.)

Steps To Reproduce

N/A

Additional Information

N/A