CMake: Get the complete representation of a path minus relative elements - cmake

I want to take a variable that has been set to a combination of path elements (potentially both absolute and relative) and get the absolute path from it. Something like what boost::filesystem::system_complete() does in C++. For example, I have something like:
set(EXTERNAL_LIB_DIR "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/../external" CACHE PATH "Location of externals")
which works but in the UI it's a bit ugly, as it might end up looking like C:/dev/repo/tool/../external. I'm wondering if there's a CMake built-in command to turn that into C:/dev/repo/external before I go and script a macro to do it. find_path kind of does this, but it requires that the path already exist and something worth searching for be there. I want it to work whether the path exists or not (I might use it for an overridden CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX default, for example).

You can use:
get_filename_component(NEW_VAR ${EXTERNAL_LIB_DIR} REALPATH)

As of CMake 3.20, you can use the cmake_path command to normalize the path, which supersedes the get_filename_component command.
cmake_path(SET MY_NEW_PATH NORMALIZE ${EXTERNAL_LIB_DIR})
This also converts any backslashes (\) into forward-slashes cleanly.

Related

CMake: find_file() does not search recursively

I'm trying to use the arduino-cmake framework but my Arduino-SDK is not recognized correctly. Searching for the cause I found the following:
find_file(${PLATFORM}_BOARDS_PATH
NAMES boards.txt
PATHS ${PLATFORM_PATH}
DOC "Path to Arduino boards definition file.")
where ${PLATFORM}_BOARDS_PATH expands to ARDUINO_BOARDS_PATH-NOTFOUND.
PLATFORM_PATH correctly points to /opt/local/arduino-1.8.7/hardware/arduino and inside you can find avr/boards.txt.
So everything seems to be Ok, right?
Changing PATHS inside the find_file() command to ${PLATFORM_PATH}/avr gives the right result - so it looks like find_file does not search recursively.
What do I do wrong? arduino-cmake seems to be working for others so I guess there must be a solution to this without altering paths like this..
As #Tsyvarev pointed out, find_file() and find_path() do not search recursively. In many cases, you can substitute these commands with the file(GLOB_RECURSE ...) command (see more details here).
In your example, you could write something like:
file(GLOB_RECURSE ${PLATFORM}_BOARDS_PATH boards.txt)

Stop CMake from prepending `lib` to library names

Sadly, CMake follows the awkward "implicit lib" convention, which inevitably causes problems when library names don't actually follow the convention (e.g. zlib), or have 'lib' as an explicit part of their name.
For example, suppose I want to add libusb:
add_library(libusb ...)
On Windows this will correctly produce libusb.lib. On Unix it will produce the hilarious liblibusb.a. Is there any way to prevent this behaviour? I know I can set the output name explicitly using OUTPUT_NAME but I'd have to use some funky generator expressions to preserve libusb.lib on Windows. I wonder if there is a better way?
(And no add_library(usb ... is not a solution; the library is called libusb not usb.)
You can modify it via CMAKE_STATIC_LIBRARY_PREFIX. So in your case just do after your project() command:
set(CMAKE_STATIC_LIBRARY_PREFIX "")
Or you can change it per target via the PREFIX target property.

Use environment variables as default for cmake options

I would like to set up a cmake script with some options (flags and strings). For some of the options I would like to use environment variables as a default. Basically, I'm trying to emulate something like MY_OPTION ?= default in a Makefile. I tried the following:
project (Optiontest)
option(MY_OPTION
"Documentation"
$ENV{MY_OPTION}
FORCE)
message("value: ${MY_OPTION}")
I called this in the following way:
$ cmake -DMY_OPTION=ON .
value: ON
$ cmake -DMY_OPTION=OFF .
value: OFF
$ MY_OPTION=OFF cmake .
value: OFF
$ MY_OPTION=ON cmake .
value: OFF
My problem is that the last line should be ON as well.
For bonus karma: I would actually prefer three levels of preference. The value of -DMY_OPTION should be used if given. If not, the value of a set environment variable MY_OPTION should be used. If this is also not set, a constant should be used. I guess, I could use a bunch of nested if statements and somehow check if the variables are set, but I don't know how and I hope there is a better way.
FORCE is (as of CMake 3.0.2) not a valid parameter for option.
This is the primary source of problems. CMake will interpret the string FORCE as the desired initial value of the option in absence of an environment variable. The usual contrived rules for string-to-truth-value-conversion apply, resulting in the option being set to OFF by this call.
Second, you need to account for the fact that the environment variable is not set. Your current code misses to handle that case properly. $ENV{MY_OPTION} will evaluate to the empty string in that case. If you evaluate the set values in both the cache and the environment, you can enforce any behavior that you want.
In general, you should think about what you actually want here. Usually, FORCE setting a cached variable is a bad idea and I would not be surprised if you found your initial argument for doing this flawed after some careful reevaluation.
Maybe value of MY_OPTION cached in CMake cache? Do you try to clean cmake cache after third call MY_OPTION=OFF cmake .?

CMake find_library matching behavior?

One specifies find_library(<var> name PATHS path1..pathn)
My question is how does find_library() match name to the library file (on Windows and Linux)?
For example, I am unable to have find_library() identify the MagicK and MagicK++ DLL files in the provided Windows binary installation of GraphicsMagicK:
The files is: CORE_RL_magick_.dll
Searching for the queries: magick or CORE_RL_magick does not work.
You might want to take a look at this documentation links:
http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v2.8.10/cmake.html#command:find_library
http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v2.8.10/cmake.html#variable:CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_PREFIXES
http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v2.8.10/cmake.html#variable:CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES
find_library may accept one or more library names. Those names get the value of CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_PREFIXES prepended and CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES
appended. This two variables should be set for each OS depending on how the librares are prefixed or suffixed there.
In your case I'd write for Windows
SET(CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_PREFIXES "")
SET(CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES ".lib" ".dll")
and for Linux
SET(CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_PREFIXES "lib")
SET(CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES ".so" ".a")
and then write
find_library(
magick
CORE_RL_magick_ (or NAMES if there are multiple names for the same library on different systems)
PATHS
path1
path2
...
(other options that are specified in documentation and would be usefull to you)
)
EDIT:
CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_PREFIXES and CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFIXES are set automatically by project() command so calling it first and find_library() after that point is a better solution than setting the variables manually.
Why not use find_file() instead of find_library() if you want to find a .dll.

msbuild -p:outputdir=c:\mydir being ignored

I'm running msbuild from the command line with the following:
msbuild mysolution.sln -p:outputdir=c:\mydir
When I run this, the outputdir is being ignored and the default specified in the csproj file is being used.
The MSDN doc for this tool says that I should be able to override the build directory using this parameter. What am I doing wrong?
You should use OutputPath and more important you should use the right syntax :
msbuild mysolution.sln /p:OutputPath=c:\mydir
Note that OutputPath is preferred over OutDir. The documentation used to be wrong about this, but I see that they've finally fixed it.
Beyond that, it's difficult to say exactly what the problem is, since you didn't show the exact path that you're passing as a parameter. There are two possible problems that I can imagine:
The OutputPath option specifies the path to the output directory relative to the project directory. That means you can't set it to a global path like C:\mydir. I assume it is unable to find the path you specified, and so it defaults to the one specified in your project file.
If the path that you're actually specifying as a parameter contains spaces, the command is likely to fail. I believe you need to wrap the path in quotes and append an extra backslash to the end of the path string.
I believe you should be using OutputPath.