[cmake-developers] Strange VS output file field

[David Cole]

On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 1:30 PM, David Cole <david.cole at kitware.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 6:19 PM, James Bigler <jamesbigler at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I recently switched to 2.8.5 and noticed something strange.
>>
>> I have several files that build into a Debug|Release agnostic place.  If I
>> build it in one then switch to the other the files don't regenerate, because
>> the build rule has been satisfied.
>>
>> With CMake 2.8.5 and VS 2010 I noticed something strange.  It wanted to
>> build the files in both debug and release.  I then looked at the vsproj
>> files and I noticed this:
>>
>>       <Outputs
>> Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='RelWithDebInfo|Win32'">C:\code\build-32-vs10-c40\lib\myfile_build.txt;%(Outputs)</Outputs>
>>
>> %(Outputs)???  Why is that in there.  If I manually remove $(Outputs) then
>> it stops rebuilding my files.
>>
>> James
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
> The "%(Attribute)" notation means inherit the value from the same
> element in my "parent". So for a file's attribute, it typically
> inherits the value from the same named attribute in the project.
>
> In this case, I'm not entirely sure why it's there, but it's been
> there right from the very first commit adding the VS 10 generator to
> CMake: http://cmake.org/gitweb?p=cmake.git;a=commitdiff;h=7491f529
>
> I can't think of the reason why it might be needed off the top of my
> head, so ... I'll try to remove it and see if all the tests pass. If
> they do, I suppose it should be ok to remove it. Does anybody else
> reading this thread have any other information?
>
> Thanks,
> David
>

I constructed a custom build command that runs a batch file and
outputs a text file solely via the VS10 IDE... and there was no
"%(Outputs)" in the vcxproj file. So I think it's safe to remove this.
I'll push a change that does that.

Thanks for the report,
David