[CMake] How do you handle recursive dependencies in CMake

[Raymond Wan]

Hi Sven,


On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 6:03 PM, Sven Baars <s.baars at rug.nl> wrote:
> The packages I use are installed in a non-standard path, because I don't
> have access to the system directories on most systems I work on, but are
> used by many other libraries. They are also all separate packages, not
> packages in the same source tree. I did not see my attachment on the
> mailing list archive, so instead I just put it on Github. It can be
> found here:
>
> https://github.com/Sbte/cmake-example
>
> I hope the example shows my workflow, and also what doesn't work for me.


Hmmmm, in that case, I should probably remain quiet as this is not
quite something I've had to do.

Maybe the only advice I can give is, if you plan to distribute your
work to others, what are your expectations in terms of where do you
think users should install these dependencies.

For example, if it's a system-level directory, then maybe you can
consider a FIND_PACKAGE solution which has a list of default paths to
search.  When you're developing on your own computer, you just change
the default path to include paths in your home directory.

There is also the ExternalProject () directive which you could
consider [https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.3/module/ExternalProject.html]
.  This would retrieve the dependencies from outside sources (i.e.,
repositories) and build them.  This would keep everything within the
same build/ path and I haven't done that (and didn't mention it
before) because all of my packages are within the same source tree.

So, still not quite your situation, though.

I hope this helps!  Perhaps others can chime in and help you with
exactly what you're stuck with...

Ray