[cmake-developers] Adding argument "OPTIONAL" to find_package() and add_subdirectory

Eric Noulard eric.noulard at gmail.com
Tue Jun 7 08:35:10 EDT 2011


2011/6/7 Eric Noulard <eric.noulard at gmail.com>:
> 2011/6/7 Alexander Neundorf <neundorf at kde.org>:
>> On Monday, June 06, 2011 03:26:03 PM Brad King wrote:
>>> On 06/04/2011 06:30 AM, Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> [...]
>
>>> >
>>> > What do you think about adding the keyword OPTIONAL to add_subdirectory ?
>>> >
>>> > Both have been proven useful, the one for find_package() especially for
>>> > packagers.
>>>
>>> Ditto previous response.  These commands are primitives.  We should not
>>> extend them with features unrelated to their basic purpose.
>>
>> While this is correct, it also keeps cmake a bit low-level.
>> For this reason, we created such macros in KDE.
>> Now our developers write stuff outside KDE, so either they can't use it, or
>> they create copies of these files.
>> This may be ok, but having 50 or 100 versions of these files and macros around
>> in the net, some probably differing slightly, is also not a nice situation.
>
> Then it is possible to create a new CMake module,
>
> say
>
>  UseEnhancedConfigure.cmake

I meant UseEnhancedFindPackage but I think you get the idea.

>
> which could be included in CMake as a contributed module maintained by KDE dev.
> This new module would define something like:
>
> optional_find_package().
> optional_add_subdirectory()
>
> this would make the feature available upstream, thus available outside KDE
> and does not add extra feature to builtin configure.
>
>>
>> These two OPTION features in this email are IMO features which are useful in
>> many projects and which would make using cmake-based projects easier for users
>> (people compiling the software), since they could expect that if packages can
>> be disabled, that this will be done via an option with a name which always
>> follows the same scheme.
>
> I totally agree with that but I think it does not implies this has to be
> done by builtin find_package/add_subdirectory ?
>
> --
> Erk
> Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » -
> http://www.april.org
>



-- 
Erk
Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » -
http://www.april.org



More information about the cmake-developers mailing list