[CMake] spaces in generator strings troublesome

Stefan.Waigand at continental-corporation.com Stefan.Waigand at continental-corporation.com
Fri Nov 10 09:49:39 EST 2017


Hello,

the usual way to pass a generator string to the cmake executable on the 
command line is:
        cmake . -G"Unix Makefiles"

But when i have some bash scripting around it and try to hold the command 
line arguments in a variable, the trouble begins...

export CMDLINE=". -G\"Unix Makefiles\"" && cmake $CMDLINE
-> CMake Error: Could not create named generator "Unix

The reason seems to be bash separates arguments by spaces, and does not 
care for the quotes.

I tried to escape the space character somehow, but nothing seems to help:

export CMDLINE=". -G\"Unix\ Makefiles\"" && cmake $CMDLINE
-> CMake Error: Could not create named generator "Unix\

export CMDLINE=". -G'Unix Makefiles'" && cmake $CMDLINE
-> CMake Error: Could not create named generator 'Unix

Now there might be ways how to work around this in bash. E.g. by quoting 
arguments on their own as done here
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42111441/how-to-pass-command-line-arguments-with-spaces-through-a-variable-in-bash
or here
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/108635/why-i-cant-escape-spaces-on-a-bash-script
But this is more complicated, harder to understand and maintain - not a 
nice solution.

Looking around, i do not seem to be alone with this kind of problem. 
Example 
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20570042/calling-cmake-with-bash-variable-argument

So here is my plea to the CMake developers and feature request:
Could you please let CMake support this kind of command line?
        cmake . -GUnix_Makefiles

i mean besides the established way CMake should accept the generator 
strings with '_' instead of ' '?
If the command line parser could replace '_'  by ' ' things would be 
backward compatible, right?
This would solve problems as mentioned above and help people to automate 
their CMake environments.

Thank you,
Stefan

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