[CMake] CMake being too clever with library names

[Steven Van Ingelgem]

You can find more info in this bug report:
http://public.kitware.com/Bug/view.php?id=3832


Brad is currently on holiday, but I hope once he return he will fix this.


Greetings,
Steven

On 12/30/07, Rodolfo Lima <rodolfo at rodsoft.org> wrote:
> Hi people.
> Sometimes I feel that CMake tries to be smarter then me when dealing
> with library names. For instance, suppose the following setup:
>
> * project
>         CMakeLists.txt
>         test.cpp
>         video.a
>
> CMakeLists.txt:
> add_executable(test test.cpp)
> target_link_libraries(test ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/video.a)
>
> test.cpp:
> int main(){}
>
> Notice that I'm specifying the library I want to link to with its
> complete path. When I run make, g++ outputs an error:
>
> /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../../i686-pc-linux-gnu/bin/ld:
> cannot find -lvideo
> collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
>
> The command line of the linker is:
> /usr/bin/c++     -fPIC "CMakeFiles/test.dir/test.cpp.o"  -o test
> -rdynamic -L/home/rodolfo/src/tst -Wl,-Bstatic -lvideo -Wl,-Bdynamic
> -Wl,-rpath,/home/rodolfo/src/tst
>
> First problem: why all the fuss with -rpath, etc, if I'm linking
> statically? Why -rdynamic ?
> Second: if I'm specifying the complete path of video.a library, why does
> it try to link it with -l and set the library path with -L? I know the
> library name is non standard (in linux), but this is a simplified case
> of a problem I'm having, and the static library should be simply put on
> the command line, nothing more than that.
>
> The problem I'm having is when compiling on windows using mingw-g++.
> Some external libraries are ".lib", others are ".a". Since cmake's
> default is ".lib" on windows, I use target_link_libraries to the
> libraries with extension ".a" specifying their complete paths, but as
> the simple case above shows, this fails.
>
> Regards,
> rod
>
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