[CMake] file(GLOB oddities

[Ryan Pavlik]

  On 8/27/10 9:17 AM, Kevin Fitch wrote:
> I am running into an issue that causing me a bit of trouble:
> file(GLOB globOutput test)
> returns the absolute path to test (assuming there is a test directory 
> under my current dir). Whereas
> file(GLOB globOutput .)
> returns an empty string. This is particularly annoying because
> file(GLOB globOutput non-existant-dir)
> also returns an empty string.
>
> And the follow on to this is that the documentation for IS_DIRECTORY, 
> EXISTS, ... says:
>  Behavior is well-defined only for full paths.
> What exactly does that mean? Just to clarify, is a "full path" an 
> absolute path (e.g. as determined by IS_ABSOLUTE)? The only way I have 
> found to get an absolute path is to use file(GLOB which works for 
> anything other than .
>
> Kevin Fitch
>
I'd suggest not using file(GLOB in general, and especially for this 
purpose or for creating lists of source files.

If you want to know the directories involved in the build, use:

    * CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR
          o http://cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#variable:CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR
    * CMAKE_BINARY_DIR
          o http://cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#variable:CMAKE_BINARY_DIR
    * CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR
          o http://cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#variable:CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR
    * CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR
          o http://cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#variable:CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR

To get an absolute path, do the following:

get_filename_component(outputvar "somedir" ABSOLUTE)
http://cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#command:get_filename_component

Hope this helps!

Ryan

-- 
Ryan Pavlik
Human-Computer Interaction Graduate Student
Virtual Reality Applications Center
Iowa State University

http://academic.cleardefinition.com/

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