[cmake-developers] CMake user-provided manifest files (was: Windows: Correctly determine Windows version)

[Brad King]

On 09/11/2015 11:45 AM, James Johnston wrote:
> The second request is currently a big pain point with CMake to get working
> correctly.  Ideally I want to reproduce the VS way of doing things, which
> is:
> 
> a.  Have link.exe generate default manifest for referencing the CRT
>     side-by-side assemblies.
> b.  Use mt.exe to put it all together in the output.
> 
> See Source/cmcmd.cxx and search for vs_link_exe to see what I'm talking about.
[snip]
> It would be certainly be nice if CMake supported user-provided manifests
> across most/all Windows generators as first-class support, not just Visual
> Studio 10.  Especially the make-like tools (various Makefile generators,
> Ninja).  :)

I would be very happy to get rid of the vs_link_exe and vs_link_dll code.
The source is full of comments about why it is there (incremental linking).
If someone can get an alternative approach working that also supports
user-provided .manifest files I would be happy to review it.

Actually I think this should be done before the Windows 10 support can
be integrated.  We need to make sure that when a .manifest file is added
to the list of sources for an exe or dll target that we can properly
honor it in all generators.  Otherwise adding support for non-VS generators
later will be a behavior change.  Also we need to make sure the semantics
of specifying manifest sources works everywhere.

-Brad