[CMake] External dependencies and Windows

[Ansis Māliņš]

If shared libraries on Windows are truly shared, then why so many
applications carry their own copies of that same Qt and Python? Examples
from my own Program Files: Anki, Blender, Mixxx, Mumble, TortoiseHg.


On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 2:15 PM, Michael Wild <themiwi at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Ansis Māliņš <ansis.malins at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I'm just learning CMake and posting questions in this mailing list, but
>> the answers I get only confuse me. It seems I must take a step back and ask
>> more general questions.
>>
>> In Linux there is a package for everything, so you just find_package
>> whatever you need.
>>
>> But on Windows most libraries exist only as zip files that you're
>> supposed to unpack right in your build environment and ship them together
>> with the executable. (Basically, in practice, there is no such thing as
>> shared libraries in Windows - nothing for find_package to find.)
>>
>
> What then are DLL's? They are the shared libraries of the Windows world.
> True, the semantics are a bit different, but they are dynamically linked.
> It's also not true that on Windows everything is a "zip files that you're
> supposed to unpack right in your build environment". If you don't believe
> me, try to take a look at Qt or Python.
>
>
>>
>> So how am I supposed to write portable CMake scripts in face of this?
>>
>
>
>  Often the Windows packages are installed into a few well known locations,
> or even better, create a registry key containing installation information
> which you then can use to find the software in your CMake code. Also, for
> SDL I would recommend to use the FindSDL.cmake module (not sure whether
> that works with SDL2, though), and only if that fails, to resort to
> ExternalProject. It is good practice to offer the user the choice which way
> should be used through a cached variable.
>
> HTH
>
> Michael
>
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