[CMake] Find*.cmake variable naming
Rodolfo Schulz de Lima
rodolfo at rodsoft.org
Mon Jan 14 13:01:58 EST 2008
Hi, I'd like to comment on the Find*.cmake variable naming procedure
adopted by cmake. Right now I have to look at some Find*.cmake files to
see what are the output variables they create. Some packages create a
*_LIBRARY, others *_LIBRARIES, others *_INCLUDE_DIRS and others
*_INCLUDE_DIR. The Modules/readme.txt procedure isn't being used for
some packages.
Also the vast majority creates upcased (is this an adjective?) variable
names, BUT Boost and wxWidgets. There two define Boost_FOUND,
Boost_LIBRARIES, wxWidgets_FOUND, wxWidgets_LIBRARIES. It should be
better if they were BOOST_FOUND, WXWIDGETS_FOUND etc.
This gets annoying when you're trying to create a macro that accepts a
package name, finds it and use their output variables. This requires an
uniformity that is lacking on Find*.cmake's.
I'll try to summarize below the discrepancies I've found (just a few of
them)
Aspell: outputs ASPELL_INCLUDE_DIR instead of ASPELL_INCLUDE_DIRS
AVIFile: outputs AVIFILE_INCLUDE_DIR instead of AVIFILE_INCLUDE_DIRS
Boost: variable names should be upcase.
Bzip2: outputs BZIP2_INCLUDE_DIR instead of BZIP2_INCLUDE_DIRS
Cable: outputs CABLE_TCL_LIBRARY instead of CABLE_TCL_LIBRARIES, and
CABLE_INCLUDE_DIR instead of CABLE_INCLUDE_DIRS
Cups: outputs CUPS_INCLUDE_DIR instead of CUPS_INCLUDE_DIRS
Curses: outputs CURSES_INCLUDE_DIR instead of CUPS_INCLUDE_DIRS
DCMTK: outputs DCMTK_INCLUDE_DIR instead of DCMTK_INCLUDE_DIRS
...
and there's a lot more. It seems that the majority uses *_INCLUDE_DIR
instead of *_INCLUDE_DIRS
Regards,
rod
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