[CMake] spaces in generator strings troublesome

[Michael Ellery]

> On Nov 10, 2017, at 6:49 AM, Stefan.Waigand at continental-corporation.com wrote:
> 
> 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


perhaps handle arguments as an array variable in bash - it’s a slightly saner way to deal with args with spaces:

CMDLINE=(. -G"Unix Makefiles") && cmake "${CMDLINE[@]}”

-Mike

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