MantisBT - CMake
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IDProjectCategoryView StatusDate SubmittedLast Update
0015634CMakeCMakepublic2015-06-29 09:132016-06-10 14:31
ReporterHeinrich Fink 
Assigned ToKitware Robot 
PrioritynormalSeverityminorReproducibilityalways
StatusclosedResolutionmoved 
PlatformOSOS Version
Product VersionCMake 3.2.3 
Target VersionFixed in Version 
Summary0015634: Support for pkgconfig --define-variable
DescriptionIt is often necessary to re-define the prefix variable of pkgconfig scripts to adapt to different compilation environments. This is usually done via "pkg-config --define-variable=prefix=/my/dev/root/libs". Unfortunately this workflow is not support by CMake scripts that use pkgconfig. A simple option to define additional agurments for pkg-config when invoked would be helpful already. Manually redefining the pkg-config executable path, to already contain the additional argument, wouldn't work.
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Issue History
Date ModifiedUsernameFieldChange
2015-06-29 09:13Heinrich FinkNew Issue
2015-06-29 10:39Heinrich FinkNote Added: 0038996
2015-06-29 10:46Brad KingNote Added: 0038997
2015-06-29 10:57Heinrich FinkNote Added: 0038998
2015-06-29 11:30Brad KingNote Added: 0038999
2015-09-08 20:00danblackNote Added: 0039373
2016-06-10 14:29Kitware RobotNote Added: 0042801
2016-06-10 14:29Kitware RobotStatusnew => resolved
2016-06-10 14:29Kitware RobotResolutionopen => moved
2016-06-10 14:29Kitware RobotAssigned To => Kitware Robot
2016-06-10 14:31Kitware RobotStatusresolved => closed

Notes
(0038996)
Heinrich Fink   
2015-06-29 10:39   
It should be noted that our current workaround is to set the PKG_CONFIG environment variable to a custom shell script that looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
pkg-config --define-variable=SOME_VAR=SOME_PATH $*
(0038997)
Brad King   
2015-06-29 10:46   
The public pkg_check_modules and pkg_search_module macros provided by the FindPkgConfig module contain many internal invocations of pkg-config. Perhaps some additional/optional argument or variable could be checked by these macros to pass extra options to pkg-config like this.

However, if your goal is just to search additional prefixes, the CMake way to do that is to set CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH as would be done for any other CMake package.
(0038998)
Heinrich Fink   
2015-06-29 10:57   
In my understanding, CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH, wouldn't be enough in our case. That would only allow to search for *.pc files in additional directories, but not actually replace a variable of the *.pc files themselves.

My web search today showed that there was a patch for this a while ago: http://www.cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/2009-February/027404.html [^]

Like you mentioned, this would be one solution, but I couldn't find the actual patch, as it was capped from the mailing archive.
(0038999)
Brad King   
2015-06-29 11:30   
Re 0015634:0038998: Okay. If you want to try to revive that patch, please read CONTRIBUTING.rst for the preferred contribution path.

Since that patch was drafted we now have Tests/RunCMake/FindPkgConfig/ to test the module. The test case will need to be updated to cover the new feature too.
(0039373)
danblack   
2015-09-08 20:00   
along a similar lines I wouldn't mind seeing the pkg-config --variable={VAR} extraction.

Is extracting all variables by default an API break? What CMake interface/macro would you choose for this and --define-variable?

Planned use - grabbing systemd directories: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.html#System%20unit%20directories [^]
(0042801)
Kitware Robot   
2016-06-10 14:29   
Resolving issue as `moved`.

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