cmake-diagnostics(7)

Introduction

CMake Diagnostics are the mechanism by which CMake categorizes and presents certain advisory information about a project's configuration and the generation of its build system. These diagnostics can be seen as the build system equivalent of compiler warnings. Diagnostics provide feedback on potential issues in several categories:

• Issues that may impact the success of the build.

• Issues that may impact the correctness of the build.

• Issues that may impact the correctness of the project packaging.

• Issues that may impact the ability of the project to be built with newer versions of dependencies.

• Issues that may impact the ability of the project to be built with newer versions of CMake.

Diagnostic Actions

The action taken when a particular diagnostic is triggered depends on the diagnostic category. Most categories will warn by default. The cmake_diagnostic() command and -W options can be used to control what action occurs when a diagnostic of a particular category is triggered. The possible actions are described in the documentation of the same.

Diagnostic Categories

The following categories are defined.

CMD_AUTHOR (-Wauthor)

Default:

Warn

Warn about a build system's incorrect use of CMake, or of a CMake interface provided by a dependency. This is the category triggered by message(AUTHOR_WARNING). It is also the ancestor of many other diagnostic categories.

The most important aspect of this category is that it represents issues with a project's build system which typically require alteration to the same. This is to say that users simply trying to build a project obtained elsewhere will typically not be interested in these warnings, except to perhaps report them to the project's developer(s).

CMD_DEPRECATED (-Wdeprecated)

Default:

Warn

Parent:

CMD_AUTHOR

Warn about use of a deprecated function or package. This is the category triggered by message(DEPRECATION).