[CMake] Problem building libraries with no sources with Visual Studio 9 (2008)

[Michael Jackson]

You will want to read this article:

http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/BuildingWinDLL
___________________________________________________________
Mike Jackson                      www.bluequartz.net
Principal Software Engineer       mike.jackson at bluequartz.net
BlueQuartz Software               Dayton, Ohio

On Dec 21, 2010, at 10:13 AM, Pere Mato Vila wrote:

> Dear all,
>
>  I am trying to build shared libraries on Windows exporting all  
> symbols. This is as an alternative of instrumenting the code with  
> dllimport/dllexport declarations. For this I do build first a static  
> library from which I get all the defined symbols to write a .DEF  
> file which is then used to build the shared library. The CMake code  
> (using version 2.8.3)  looks like this:
>
> add_library( ${library}-static STATIC ${sources} )
> add_custom_command( OUTPUT {library}.def COMMAND <using ${library}- 
> static> DEPENDS ${library}-static )
> add_library(${library} SHARED ${library}.def)
> target_link_libraries(${library}  ${library}-static ${other-libs} )
> set_target_properties(${library} PROPERTIES LINK_INTERFACE_LIBRARIES  
> ${other-libs})
>
>   This works just fine when using the nmake generator. The library  
> is created and has all the symbols are exported as desired. But,  
> when using Visual C++ 2008 express edition I get the following error  
> message:
>
> 1>.\mylib.dir\Debug\mylib.dll.intermediate.manifest : general error  
> c1010070: Failed to load and parse the manifest. The system cannot  
> find the file specified.
>
>  The problem is that the shared library has been defined without any  
> 'real' source file (only the .def file is declared) and somehow the  
> generated code does not produce the required manifest file. Does  
> anybody see a problem with these kind of constructs?  Should it just  
> work from within the IDE?
>  Experimentally I have found a workaround, which consists in adding  
> a dummy source file in the shared library definition.
>
> ...
> file( WRITE ${library}.cpp "// empty file!!!\n" )
> add_library( ${library} SHARED ${library}.cpp ${library}.def)
> ...
>
>
> I have also noticed that the dependency of the shared library to  
> the .def file is also missing. This is, newer versions of the .def  
> file does not trigger a re-build of the shared library.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Pere Mato  CERN, PH Department, CH 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland
>          e-mail: pere.mato at cern.ch      tel: +41 22 76 78696
>          fax:  +41 22 76 68792            gsm: +41 76 48 70855
>
>
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