[vtkusers] CMake best practice for using VTK?

[David Gobbi]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 1:44 PM, Elvis Stansvik <
elvis.stansvik at orexplore.com> wrote:

> I'm using the trio
>
> find_package(VTK REQUIRED)
>
> include(${VTK_USE_FILE})
>
> target_link_libraries(myapp ${VTK_LIBRARIES})
>
> in my CMakeLists.txt, to find and link against VTK, like is done in the
> VTK examples.
>
> I'm surprised by two things:
>
> 1. The shear amount of libraries that are linked against. Are all these
> really necessary, or is it possible to more selective somehow? Is there
> something like Qt's CMake system, where you can pull in just a certain Qt
> module with target_link_libraries(myapp Qt5::Widgets) ?
>
> 2. How come the .so files are specified directly as inputs, with their
> full paths? Isn't the common method to just add the appropriate -l (and
> possibly -L if needed) flags?
>

I build my own list that contains only the libraries that I need, and I
also try to be careful about public vs. private linkage.  For example:

    set(VTK_LIBS vtkCommonCore vtkCommonDataModel vtkImagingCore vtkIOImage)
    # Also link vtkIOMPIImage if present, it has factories for vtkIOImage
    list(FIND VTK_LIBRARIES vtkIOMPIImage TMP_INDEX)
    if(TMP_INDEX GREATER -1)
      set(VTK_LIBS ${VTK_LIBS} vtkIOMPIImage)
    endif()

    target_link_libraries(${LIB_NAME} LINK_PUBLIC ${VTK_LIBS})
    # target_link_libraries(${LIB_NAME} LINK_PRIVATE <other libs>)

To find out what modules you need to link, the script
VTK/Utilities/Maintenance/WhatModulesVTK.py can be of some use.

I know this doesn't cover all of your points, but unfortunately this is as
complete an answer as I have time to give right now.  Hopefully someone
else can jump in and provide more details.

 - David
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