[cmake-developers] Depends information in buildsystem files

[Brad King]

On 02/07/2013 11:42 AM, Stephen Kelly wrote:
> Are you sure?

Well, my proposal would be sufficient but may not be necessary
(i.e. overkill).

> It seems to me it would be much easier and less duplicative to 
> add a way to specify TARGETS in try_compile, and in cmCoreTryCompile, 
> generate the IMPORTED targets there with whatever properties they have.

...and in CMakeExpandImportedTargets handle imported targets in
CMAKE_REQUIRED_LIBRARIES using this underlying CMake feature, yes.

> I pushed the try_compile_targets topic to my clone as a proof of concept, 
> but it would likely need to be reworked from scratch (eg a 
> cmExportFileGenerator subclass which can re-export imported targets). 

Yes.  Also along those lines, I've several times seen requests to
allow install(TARGETS) to re-install an imported target.  It is
usually requested by people wanting to package dependencies of
a project for distribution with CPack.  A similar re-exporting
feature in cmExportFileGenerator would help with that.

-Brad