[cmake-developers] Finding versioned libraries

[Eric Noulard]

2012/2/15 Brad King <brad.king at kitware.com>:
> On 2/15/2012 9:18 AM, Eric Noulard wrote:
>>
>> If the user does not trust find_library for checking proper extension
>> then:
>>    1) He could modify/append CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES
>>        in this case:
>>           list(APPEND CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES ".so.2")
>>        should work.
>>
>>    2) He could use find_file
>>
>> Now if we consider this is a bug,
>> then with your modification "HasValidSuffix" is ill-named since it is more
>> like
>> "ContainsValidSuffix" or "MatchesValidSuffix".
>>
>> With this modification one could now find a not-properly-installed
>> library (missing links)
>> without noticing it.
>>
>> What is your purpose here, do you want to ensure that you find a
>> particular version of a lib?
>
>
> IMO searching for an exact file name like
>
>  find_library(MYLIB libfoo.so.2)
>
> is useful regardless of the expected library type.  The only reason
> CMake requires the library prefix and suffix to appear in the name
> is to prevent things like
>
>  find_library(MYLIB python)
>
> from locating the python executable which is called just "python".
> We check for both the prefix and suffix to ensure the file name
> looks like a library before considering it raw.

ok I see.

> Back before CMake
> 2.6 started using full paths to link it was not possible to link
> to library file that did not look exactly like a library (proper
> prefix and suffix).  Now that we can pass the exact file name to
> the linker we can have a softer test for what looks like a lib.

ok too, no more question then :-]

-- 
Erk
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