Shared Library, vcpkg, cmake and linking - cmake

I have installed package "spdlog" from vcpkg manager, successfully linked with the library by providing CMake instruction and generated foo.dll and foo.dll.a
Now, I use these dll's in my application by linking with foo.dll
spdlog headers (used in foo.dll) can not be found by my application fooapp now.
If I use target_link_libraries(foo INTERFACE spdlog::spdlog spdlog::spdlog_header_only) in CmakeLists.txt of fooapp, include error is gone. But Linker complains that it can't find the foo.dll.a at xxx path. What is confusing that at xxx path the .dll.a file is present. (Don't know if its correct, just did to let cmake find spdlog headers as per vcpkg instructions)
Note: If I remove dependency of spdlog in foo.dll and try simple cout all works fine. Linker can find and link foo.dll.a and successfully make fooapp.exe. This is becoming too confusing for me now and I can't find good stack answers related to this. spdlog here is just a reference, It can be any other package by vcpkg.
a) Are dll headers also the dependency of applications?
b) Why .dll.a is not found, It is at the exact location for what it complains about.
c) Why removing the dependency of spdlog make it all work again?

Related

How to build namespaced subprojects in cmake that find each other

I am trying to get a basic cmake project to work with 2 subprojects (each a library) where one depends on the other.
As such I have a self-contained project for lib1 and a self-contained project for lib2 (but that depends on lib1). Some lib2 authors could while others will not have access to lib1 source. If no access is desired, it seems that building and installing one after the other is the way to go. Is there a way to build them in one go using cmake? Currently, I am trying using an overall project, libs.
However, as the libraries are related I want to call them in a boost / poco like fashion. That is for lib2 I would like to write:
find_package(libs COMPONENTS lib1 REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(lib2 PUBLIC libs::lib1)
I have created config files for both lib1 and lib2 and libs. However, I keep getting the same error
CMake Error at libs/lib2/CMakeLists.txt:67 (find_package):
By not providing "Findlibs.cmake" in CMAKE_MODULE_PATH this project has
asked CMake to find a package configuration file provided by "libs", but
CMake did not find one.
Could not find a package configuration file provided by "libs" with any of
the following names:
libsConfig.cmake
libs-config.cmake
Add the installation prefix of "libs" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set
"libs_DIR" to a directory containing one of the above files. If "libs"
provides a separate development package or SDK, be sure it has been
installed.
I don't understand where to put these files. It searches for them under prefix/ etc but at the time of building none of these libraries is yet installed. What is the proper place to put the -config.cmake files? I have put them all in
${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/libs
which seems similar to Poco, but the error remains. How can the libraries find each other?
// update:
From the comments I understand that lib1 first needs to be build in order to use find_package. Is there a way (in cmake) to
build lib1, install it, build lib2
or is this better to do using a bash / python / etc script?

CMake importing both shared and static library versions, but I only want one

I would like to use the Antlr framework in a project. I'm using CMake to build the project.
I would like to use the SHARED library version of Antlr, not the STATIC one. Its CMake file contains targets for both.
Antlr's github site explicity tells me to use the following code:
find_package(antlr4-runtime REQUIRED)
# add runtime include directories on this project.
include_directories( ${ANTLR4_INCLUDE_DIR} )
# add runtime to project dependencies
add_dependencies( Parsertest antlr4_shared )
# add runtime to project link libraries
target_link_libraries( Parsertest PRIVATE
antlr4_shared)
(another target, antlr4_static, exists, but shouldn´t be used.)
I copied it exactly like this and am getting the following error:
CMake Error at /usr/lib64/cmake/antlr4-runtime/antlr4-targets.cmake:82 (message):
The imported target "antlr4_static" references the file
"/usr/lib/libantlr4-runtime.a"
but this file does not exist.
I dont have the static library installed in my system as I have no intention of using it. Still, how do I make CMake stop looking for the wrong target in the first place? I use it nowhere in my CMakeLists.txt file and am puzzled by this behavior.

How to rewrite a find_package based library into one which can be embedded into the parent project directly?

The library libwebrtc from https://github.com/cloudwebrtc/libwebrtc-build/blob/dev/CMakeLists.txt was built to be used with make; make install and the project which wants to use the library must later use the find_package from CMake.
I, however, want to change libwebrtc so it can be added as a git submodule into my current project as a custom library, as, for instance, https://github.com/itay-grudev/SingleApplication which is compiled when I type: cmake ..; make into a static/dynamic library and then linked in my main application. (The Qt library example I references earlier was confusing since this is build outside of my main project and only linked to afterwards - which is not what I want). Sorry for that confusion.
To be able to do that, I think that the ExternalProject_Add at https://github.com/cloudwebrtc/libwebrtc-build/blob/a24a5e5947658d43339d4bfd85d3f4c52fc71057/CMakeLists.txt#L100 must be changed into a add_library call.
The problem here is that the include_directories is used by the main project before the library has been completely built.
Question
How to rewrite libwebrtc to be used as a simple static library with proper build dependencies so that my main project is only compiled/linked after the libwebrtc build was finished and custom header files were generated in the CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR of libwebrtc.
Or in other words, how to rewrite libwebrtc to be used without having to call make install for the library and then use find_package to use that library.
The hack (which is working already)
With this hack I am already able to:
Build the library from my parent project
Depend on the generated header files which exist only after the libwebrtc has been built completely (thus, delay main project building until dependencies are meet)
Depend on the generated webrtc.a static library for the linker step
I imaging that make install will work since libwebrtc is statically linked.
add_dependencies(${PROJECT_NAME} libwebrtcx)
add_subdirectory(third-party/libwebrtcx)
include_directories(
${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/sources/third-party/libwebrtcx/include/webrtc
${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/sources/third-party/libwebrtcx/include/webrtc/third_party/libyuv/include/
${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/sources/third-party/libwebrtcx/webrtc/src/third_party/abseil-cpp
)
add_library(libwebrtc STATIC IMPORTED)
set_property(TARGET libwebrtc PROPERTY IMPORTED_LOCATION "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/sources/third-party/libwebrtcx/webrtc/src/out/Release/obj/libwebrtc.a")
target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} libwebrtc)
Note: It requires to rename the libwebrtc project to libwebrtcx and also the ExternalProject_Add at https://github.com/cloudwebrtc/libwebrtc-build/blob/a24a5e5947658d43339d4bfd85d3f4c52fc71057/CMakeLists.txt#L100 must be renamed to libwebrtcx.
Note: It also requires to rename all CMAKE_BINARY_DIR into CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR and CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR to CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR. Details can be found here: CMake: Using add_subproject with a library using Include ends up in wrong relative path

install shared imported library with necessary links

This question asks how to install a shared library with cmake which has been imported rather than being built by the current project:
Can I install shared imported library?
To repeat the issue:
add_library(libfoobar SHARED IMPORTED)
# this install command is illegal
install(TARGET libfoobar LIBRARY DESTINATION "${RPMBUILDROOT}${LIBDIR}")
This was raised as a [https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/issues/14311|issue] with cmake that has been closed, effectively with a resolution of will not fix. The grounds are, quite reasonably, that cmake does not know enough about an imported target to reliably install it.
One point the answer to that question misses is that install(TARGET) will automagically create links from libfoo.so to libfoo.so.major and libfoo.so.minor version on GNU/Linux and other unix-like platforms where this is required.
Is there a way to hijack cmake into treating a custom target as if it was built by the project or otherwise persuade it to create those links?
Something like:
add_library(libfoobar SHARED IMPORTED)
#? add_custom_target(X libfoobar)
install(TARGET X LIBRARY DESTINATION "${RPMBUILDROOT}${LIBDIR}")
What is a canonical way to do this?
When a library is built by CMake, it is CMake who assigns soversion numbers to it (according to project's settings).
When a library isn't built by CMake, CMake doesn't know soversion, so it cannot create symlinks for you.
If you bother about that CMake actually installs symlink instead of file, resolve symlinks before installing, like in that question.
Well, you may ask CMake to guess soversion of the library (e.g. by resolving symlinks and checking their names). But why you ever need symlinks?
The main purpose of soversion symlink is to resolve compatibility issues with the future library's updates. But updates are possible only when the library is installed by the project who creates it.
If your project installs library produced by other project, it is unlikely that you want to support updates for the local library's installation. So there is no needs for you to support soversions.

CMake package configuration files for upstream projects using Qt5 problems

I am working on a larger C++ library that is using CMake and depends on Qt.
We moved from Qt4 to Qt5 and now I encounter a problem when using our lib
in an upstream project. As a minimal working example demonstrating the problem please have a look at this repo:
https://github.com/philthiel/cmake_qt5_upstream
It contains two separate CMake projects:
MyLIB: a tiny library that uses QString from Qt5::Core.
It generates and installs package configuration files
MyLIBConfig.cmake, MyLIBConfigVersion.cmake, and MyLIBTargets.cmake
in order to be searchable by CMake find_package()
MyAPP: a tiny executable depending on MyLIB
The project uses find_package(MyLIB) and creates an executable that uses MyLIB
The problem is that CMake gives me the following error message when configuring the MyAPP project:
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:11 (add_executable):
Target "MyAPP" links to target "Qt5::Core" but the target was not found.
Perhaps a find_package() call is missing for an IMPORTED target, or an
ALIAS target is missing?
The reason for this behaviour is that in the automatically generated MyLIBTargets.cmake file the INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES entry for Qt5 Core is the Qt5::Core symbol. Using Qt4, the absolute path to the Qt core lib was specified here.
Now, I simply can resolve this by using
find_package(Qt5Core 5.X REQUIRED)
in the MyAPP project.
However, I would like to know if this is the intended/generic way to go, i.e. requesting upstream projects of our lib to search for the required transitive Qt5 dependencies themselves, or if I probably misuse CMake here and need to change my configuration procedure?
The CMake docu on package file generation
https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.0/manual/cmake-packages.7.html
mentions that macros can be provided by the package configuration files to upstream. Maybe this would be the correct place to search for imported targets like Qt5 and break upstream configuration runs when these dependencies are not found?
Best,
Philipp
[edit of the edit] Full Source Example
You need to deliver a CMake config file for your project, and probably the ConfigFile should be generated via CMake itself (because you cannot know for shure where the user will install your software).
Tip, use the ECM cmake modules to ease the creation of that:
find_package(ECM REQUIRED NO_MODULE)
include(CMakePackageConfigHelpers)
ecm_setup_version(${PROJECT_VERSION}
VARIABLE_PREFIX ATCORE
VERSION_HEADER "${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/atcore_version.h"
PACKAGE_VERSION_FILE "${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/KF5AtCoreConfigVersion.cmake"
SOVERSION 1
)
configure_package_config_file("${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/KF5AtCoreConfig.cmake.in"
"${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/KF5AtCoreConfig.cmake"
INSTALL_DESTINATION ${CMAKECONFIG_INSTALL_DIR}
)
and the KF5AtCoreConfig.cmake.in:
#PACKAGE_INIT#
find_dependency(Qt5Widgets "#REQUIRED_QT_VERSION#")
find_dependency(Qt5SerialPort "#REQUIRED_QT_VERSION#")
find_dependency(KF5Solid "#KF5_DEP_VERSION#")
include("${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/KF5AtCoreTargets.cmake")
This will generate the correct FindYourSortware.cmake with all your dependencies.
[edit] Better explanation on what's going on.
If you are providing a library that will use Qt, and that would also need to find the Qt5 library before compilling the user's source, you need to provide yourself a FindYourLibrary.cmake code, that would call
find_package(Qt5 REQUIRED COMPONENTS Core Gui Widgets Whatever)
Now, if it's your executable that needs to be linked, use the Components instead of the way you are doing it now.
find_package(Qt5 REQUIRED COMPONENTS Core)
then you link your library with
target_link_libraries(YourTarget Qt5::Core)