[cmake-developers] EXPORT_NAME-genex

[Brad King]

On 05/20/2013 10:15 AM, Stephen Kelly wrote:
> Brad King wrote:
>> Other than for error message generation, what does knowing whether a
>> target is imported or not matter?  Abstracting that away has value too.
>> See below.
> 
> Some other things I can think of is that an imported target can't be re-
> exported, and its location property can be safely read (btw, I don't know if 
> $<TARGET_FILE:tgt> reads the LOCATION for IMPORTED targets).
> 
> The difference can't be fully abstracted away. There are other differences 
> in how they can be used.

These are reasons a project CMake code author might want to treat
the targets differently, but they don't need :: to know which targets
are not theirs.  If I'm in a project Foo and see a target name
called "boost_any" I can be pretty sure it isn't mine.

I'm fine with the :: convention for those who want it but it should
not be the only recommended way.

> IMPORTED targets can't be used as the RHS in tll, for example. 

Huh?  That is *the* use case for them.

-Brad