Generator expression in configure_file - cmake

Question

We are porting some rather old code and of course we want to use generator expressions now.
The by configure_file generated .pc files now contain -I$<INSTALL_INTERFACE:include>.
The only hint about how to resolve generator expressions I found was to use
file(GENERATE
Of course this is executed during the configure step so the above expression is resolved to an empty string.
Edit:
here is an example
CMakeLists.txt:
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.11)
project(test CXX)
add_library(foo SHARED main.cpp)
target_include_directories(foo PUBLIC $<INSTALL_INTERFACE:include>)
# now later buried deep in some functions
get_property( _include_dirs TARGET foo PROPERTY INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES )
configure_file(config.in config.out #ONLY)
# content of config.out is "include = -I$<INSTALL_INTERFACE:include>"
file(GENERATE OUTPUT config.out2 INPUT ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/config.out)
# content of config.out2 is "include = -I"
# most likely because the INSTALL_INTERFACE isn't used when the file is generated
config.in:
include = #_include_dirs#
and main.cpp is just empty.

Answer 1

As the CMake documentation states the file (GENERATE ...) command can use generator expressions which are evaluated by the generator.
Generate Files
You can let CMake generate files with custom code directly without the workaround of a configure_file command.
Single-Config Generators
For single-config generators like Makefiles you can use:
file (GENERATE
OUTPUT "config.out"
CONTENT "include = -I$<INSTALL_INTERFACE:include>"
)
As my CMake code has to work with both multi-config and single-config generators I did not test the code specifically.
Single- And Multi-Config Generators
In general for all generators, one can use the following signature:
file (GENERATE
OUTPUT "config_$<CONFIG>.out"
CONTENT "include = -I$<INSTALL_INTERFACE:include>"
)
Due to the nature of the command in relation to multi-config generators like Visual Studio this will generate multiple files in your build folder for each build type specified in this variable CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES:
config_Debug.out
config_Release.out
config_RelWithDebInfo.out
...
config_< BUILD_TYPE >.out
If you do not specify unique filenames and CMake tries to generate the files it will stop the execution with an error.
Use Generated Files
To use the previously generated files it depends on what you need. First of all the files will exist after the configuration stage.
Single-Config Generators
To use a generated file in a single-config generator scenario with a constant name (e.g. config.out) there should be no additional work necessary.
Single- And Multi-Config Generators
For multi-config generators it is slighty different. As you have to use generator expressions to access the appropriate file at build time. If you have a CMake instruction that supports generator expressions then you can just use the filename config_$<CONFIG>.out.
But if you need the file to be named exactly the same regardless of the build type (like config.out) it gets a little more tricky.
First you have to tell CMake that there should be a file named like config.out by using add_custom_command and specifiying the OUTPUT parameter:
add_custom_command (
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} "-E" "copy_if_different" "config_$<CONFIG>.out" "config.out"
VERBATIM
PRE_BUILD
DEPENDS "config_$<CONFIG>.out"
OUTPUT "config.out"
COMMENT "creating config.out file ({event: PRE_BUILD}, {filename: config.out})"
)
CMake will create a file dependency internally and every time one references the filename config.out it will ensure that the add_custom_command gets executed.
But this will not work in every case as it depends on the further instructions which should use the file.
Depending on the commands you are using you can now specify the file config.out as input for some commands (like target_sources, ...) and CMake will detect on a file-dependency level that it has to ensure the existence of config.out.
If you want to generate a file which is not referenced on a file-dependency level (like versioninfo.txt) then you have to ensure that CMake executes the add_custom_command every time your build target gets executed via a target-dependency:
add_custom_target ("generate_config_out" DEPENDS "config.out")
add_dependencies ("MY_LIBRARY_TARGET" "generate_config_out")
Every time CMake builds the MY_LIBRARY_TARGET target it will previously build the generate_config_out target which in turn depends on the config.out that CMake will process on the file-dependency level.