[CMake] link_libraries() deprecated. Why?

[Philip Lowman]

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 4:03 AM, Marcel Loose <loose at astron.nl> wrote:

> Hi Philip,
>
> Thanks for your reply. Your solution is ok, but it looks a bit like a
> workaround for a feature that is missing, but was once there:
> link_libraries().
>
> To me, it's not really clear why link_libraries() has been deprecated
> and, for example, include_directories() has not. IMHO, using
> target_link_libraries() for a general library has a too fine
> granularity.
> Suppose include_directories() were deprecated as well in favour of, say,
> target_include_directories(). That would create the same problem: carry
> around variables holding a bunch of include directories that must be
> supplied to each target.
>
> I don't like to use deprecated features, so I would love to see the
> deprecation of link_libraries() to be reverted. But maybe I'm missing a
> good reason for not doing so.


I'm not sure why the feature was "deprecated".  I didn't even know about it
until you posted the question!  I also don't know exactly what CMake's
stance is on deprecation although I think the official policy is not to
remove old commands because it would break backwards compatibility.  The
word "deprecated" can imply that the feature is meant to be removed but
doesn't necessarily mean so.  The ambiguity there really sucks.  Perhaps
"obsolete" is a better choice of words.

-- 
Philip Lowman
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/attachments/20090402/1a25fb3f/attachment.htm>