[CMake] Copying of 3rd party DLLs in a POST-BUILD step

[Michael Jackson]

I was going to chime in with my own macro:

# --------------------------------------------------------------------
#-- Copy all the Qt4 dependent DLLs into the current build directory so that
#-- one can debug an application or library that depends on Qt4 libraries.
macro (CMP_COPY_QT4_RUNTIME_LIBRARIES QTLIBLIST)
    #message(STATUS "CMP_COPY_QT4_RUNTIME_LIBRARIES")
    if (MSVC)
        if (DEFINED QT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE)
            set(TYPE "d")
            FOREACH(qtlib ${QTLIBLIST})
                GET_FILENAME_COMPONENT(QT_DLL_PATH_tmp ${QT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE} PATH)
                message(STATUS "Generating Copy Rule for Qt Debug DLL Library ${QT_DLL_PATH_tmp}/${qtlib}d4.dll")  
                add_custom_target(ZZ_${qtlib}-Debug-Copy ALL
                            COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy_if_different ${QT_DLL_PATH_tmp}/${qtlib}${TYPE}4.dll
                            ${CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY}/Debug/ 
                            COMMENT "Copying ${qtlib}${TYPE}4.dll to ${CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY}/Debug/")
                message(STATUS "Generating Copy Rule for Qt Release DLL Library ${QT_DLL_PATH_tmp}/${qtlib}d4.dll")  
                add_custom_target(ZZ_${qtlib}-Release-Copy ALL
                            COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy_if_different ${QT_DLL_PATH_tmp}/${qtlib}4.dll
                            ${CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY}/Release/ 
                            COMMENT "Copying ${qtlib}4.dll to ${CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY}/Release/")
          
            ENDFOREACH(qtlib)
        endif(DEFINED QT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE)
    endif()
endmacro()

The only issue I really have with this is that this macro requires there to be BOTH debug and Release libraries available and will copy BOTH no matter which configuration is being built. I am thinking that the "yourCopyDlls.cmake" could be auto generated based on what the programmer says they need and then do the appropriate copy. I may look into this today. Thanks for sharing.
___________________________________________________________
Mike Jackson                    Principal Software Engineer
BlueQuartz Software                            Dayton, Ohio
mike.jackson at bluequartz.net              www.bluequartz.net

On Jan 9, 2012, at 9:51 AM, John Drescher wrote:

> 2012/1/9 Hauke Heibel <hauke.heibel at googlemail.com>:
>> Hi Michael,
>> 
>> What I do is running a custom command which itself executes a CMake
>> script. Usually similar to
>> 
>> add_custom_command(TARGET CopyDlls
>>  COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND}
>>        -DMSVC_BUILD_CONFIG_DIR=${CMAKE_CFG_INTDIR}
>>        -DCMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY=${CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY}
>>        -P "<pathto>/yourCopyDlls.cmake"
>>  VERBATIM
>> )
>> 
>> In the "yourCopyDlls.cmake", you can GLOB your DLLs with or without
>> the "d" postfix depending on MSVC_BUILD_CONFIG_DIR. You can now even
>> copy additional files such as e.g. PDB files.
>> 
> 
> Thanks for sharing this. I use cmake generate a batch file (using
> FILE(append ...) ) that calls cmake -E copy_if_different for each
> file. then add this as a custom target however your method looks much
> cleaner..
> 
> 
> John
> --
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