[cmake-developers] [PATCH] Fixes to ExternalProject and it's tests

[David Cole]

On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Rolf Eike Beer <eike at sf-mail.de> wrote:
> These two patches address some issues I found:
>
> -ExternalProject_Add(... DEPENDS something) does not work if that something is
> not itself created by ExternalProject_Add(). Fixed and testcase added.
>
> -The testcases for ExternalProject fail to detect on my German system my
> Subversion version. We had the issue back in the FindSubversion.cmake some
> time again and fixed it there, no need to duplicate the old wrong code here.
>
> The patches are independent of each other.
>
> Greetings,
>
> Eike
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I'm not convinced the DEPENDS patch makes things better...
ExternalProject works best (and is easiest to think about) when it is
used in a "SuperBuild" sort of scenario in which *all* the targets are
ExternalProject targets. Encouraging users to mix EP targets and
non-EP targets is a mistake, I think. While it is allowed and
achievable to mix things, it is certainly not easy, and requires mucho
understanding and thought.

Besides, you can easily do an "add_dependencies" after adding an
ExternalProject if it depends on something else in your build that is
not an ExternalProject.

I'm not dead set against the DEPENDS patch, but I don't see it as
urgent. What do others here think?


The subversion patch, though, looks pretty reasonable. I'll merge that
and push to 'next' later today.


Thanks,
David