[cmake-developers] Improved support for using cmake-based libraries in non-cmake projects

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

KDE is getting more modular, so instead of a few huge "modules" there will be 
much more independent libraries.
We'll try to make all those libraries install proper FooConfig.cmake files.
Currently most of these libraries install already pkgconfig pc-files.
This means they (would) have to install two such files, one for pkgconfig and 
one for cmake.

Proposal: I'd like to add a command line switch to cmake, so you can call it 
like
cmake --find_package Foo --Dmode=COMPILE --Dtoolchain=GNU 
and it will
* try to find Foo only in config-mode
* if found, it will check that it has been found via FOO_FOUND
* if so, it will check that for FOO_INCLUDES and FOO_LIBRARIES
* create the command line arguments for the compiler from that
* print "-I/opt/foo/include" to stdout

This would make these installed Config-files usefull also for non-cmake, 
simple Makefile-based projects.

Opinions ?
I think I'll start working on this in the next days.

Alex