[Cmake] ar+ranlib detection

[William A. Hoffman]

This does look like a problem.   However, the problem is
a bit complicated.

Basically, the FIND_PROGRAM command looks like this:

FIND_PROGRAM(CMAKE_AR NAMES ar PATHS /bin /usr/bin /usr/local/bin)
FIND_PROGRAM(CMAKE_RANLIB NAMES ranlib PATHS /bin /usr/bin /usr/local/bin)

And it works by looking in the paths specified to the command first,
then in the environment variable $PATH.   So, you get the bad behavior
where cmake made find something not in your path.   

One option to fix this would be to change the order, so that FIND_PROGRAM
looks in the PATH first then in the other paths passed into the command.
However, this may produce different results than cmake has in the past.
A better option would be to specifically ask for the system path in the command,
so cmake list writers could decide where to put the path.

Something like this:

FIND_PROGRARM(CMAKE_AR_NAMES ar PATHS SYSTEMPATH /bin /usr/bin /usr/local/bin)

You could not use $ENV(PATH) because path can be ; or : separated depending on the OS.

I will enter this as a bug.

For now, if you want a quick fix, you can change this file:

CMake/Modules/CMakeDetermineCCompiler.cmake

And remove the extra paths for CMAKE_AR and CMAKE_RANLIB.   For those programs
it makes sense that cmake should not have extra paths anyway.  So, I will check
in the fix to cvs cmake, and it should be in the next 1.8.2 release.
Thanks for the report.

-Bill



At 09:37 AM 10/9/2003, Doug Henry wrote:
>I have a development toolchain built independently of my linux distro. 
>For example, binutils and gcc are in a dir called /server/tools/bin. 
>This path is first in my bash PATH.  When I run cmake my compilers get
>detected according to my path, but the binutils (ar, ranlib, etc) are
>always detected in /usr/bin.  Shouldn't they also be detected from the
>path search order?  Is there a way I can fix this without having to
>manually change it through ccmake?
>
>Thanks
>
>
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