[cmake-developers] Source file dependencies

[Wouter Klouwen]

Hi all,

In trying to improve our build rules, one of the problems I encountered
is that I effectively have some source files that cannot be compiled
unless certain targets are run.

I noticed that cmSourceFile has the AddDepend() method, which looks to
do the kind of thing that I want to do.
cmFlTKWrapUICommand and cmCPluginAPI are the only users of this, with
there being no way of setting this from a CMakeLists.txt.
The former seems to do exactly the kind of think that I need, which is
to set up some code generation.

It would be nice if I could add items to this list, perhaps through
setting a property on the source files themselves, e.g this rather
contrived short example:

add_custom_command(OUTPUT bar.h COMMAND touch bar.h)
add_custom_target(bar DEPENDS generate_bar bar.h)
set_source_files_properties(foo.cpp PROPERTIES DEPENDS bar)

Is this a bad idea? Would there be a better way?

Thanks,
    W
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