[CMake] Possible bug in environment variable expansion?

[Chris Volpe ARA/SED]

I am trying to build an Open Source project called PCL which uses Boost, and CMake's ability to find the Boost libraries seems dependent on whether the BOOST_LIBRARYDIR contains a literal path string, or whether it contains a string that incorporates the expansion of BOOST_ROOT. Here are the details:

Boost is installed from a pre-built installer in the folder C:\local\boost_1_55_0. This folder contains, among other things, a subfolder called "boost", which contains the headers, and a subfolder called "lib64-msvc-12.0", which contains 64-bit libraries built with MS Visual Studio 2013. Ordinarily, CMake would like that folder to be called simply "lib", but that's not what the installer created, so I'm trying to override the default with environment variables. I have the following three environment variables defined, all of which are of type "Expandable string":

BOOST_ROOT=C:\local\boost_1_55_0
BOOST_INCLUDEDIR=%BOOST_ROOT%
BOOST_LIBRARYDIR=%BOOST_ROOT%\lib64-msvc-12.0

With these settings, CMake reports an error during the configuration process, as follows:

CMake Error at C:/Program Files (x86)/CMake/share/cmake-3.0/Modules/FindBoost.cmake:1179 (message):
Unable to find the requested Boost libraries.

Boost version: 1.55.0

Boost include path: C:/local/boost_1_55_0

Could not find the following Boost libraries:

boost_system
boost_filesystem
boost_thread
boost_date_time
boost_iostreams
boost_chrono

No Boost libraries were found. You may need to set BOOST_LIBRARYDIR to the
directory containing Boost libraries or BOOST_ROOT to the location of
Boost.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
cmake/pcl_find_boost.cmake:38 (find_package)
CMakeLists.txt:230 (include)

But if change the definition of BOOST_LIBRARYDIR by replacing "%BOOST_ROOT%" with the value assigned to BOOST_ROOT, resulting in this:
BOOST_LIBRARYDIR=C:\local\boost_1_55_0\lib64-msvc-12.0
the configuration succeeds. The only difference seems to be whether the "C:\local\boost_1_55_0" part of the path is specified explicitly, or obtained implicitly with %BOOST_ROOT%. It would surprise me if this behavior were by design. Does anyone have an explanation for this?

Thanks,
Chris


Christopher R. Volpe, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist, Remote Sensing & Decision Analytics

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