[cmake-developers] Is there a way to avoid LOCATION property with Qt5?

[Alan W. Irwin]

Hi Nils:

Thanks for your quick reply.  More below in context.


On 2015-04-28 08:45+0200 Nils Gladitz wrote:

> On 04/28/2015 08:00 AM, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
>> The Qt5 cmake documentation at
>> <http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/cmake-manual.html> which Steve has referred me
>> to before states you should use the LOCATION property of targets to
>> determine the actual path to libraries. The PLplot build system
>> requires those locations so it can transform them into the -L and -l
>> form required to generate its pkg_config *.pc files.
>> 
>> Some time ago I got this process to work fine for CMP0026 OLD and Qt5, but
>> what is the alternative I should use for the CMP0026 NEW case (which
>> disallows using the LOCATION property for targets)?
>> 
>> Note PLplot uses a minimum CMake version of 3.0.2 so I am looking for
>> a CMP0026 NEW solution that works for that version or above for Qt5.
>
> CMP0026 only applies to build targets.
>
> The location of build targets is still in flux during configuration which is 
> why getting the location of those during configuration time is unsafe.
>
> For imported targets this does not apply since their location is fixed.

OK.  Thanks, for pointing that out.  Could you make that more obvious
in <http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.2/policy/CMP0026.html>, i.e.
change the summary line from

Disallow use of the LOCATION target property.

==>

Disallow use of the LOCATION property for build targets.

I took that summary line to mean exactly what it said and just plain
missed the reference to build targets that is in the first paragraph
of that documenation.

>
> For which configuration LOCATION returns isn't defined but I suppose that may 
> not matter for pkg-config.
>
> Otherwise you may want to look into LOCATION_<CONFIG>.

I don't understand exactly what you mean by "configuration LOCATION
returns".  From what you said that term means something different from
LOCATION_<CONFIG> and in any case is not relevant to my use case of
generating pkg-config *.pc files with our build system, but I am
nevertheless curious about what you meant.)

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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