[CMake] What do Visual Studio users do so they can run/debug their programs when using 3rd party .dlls?

[Klaim - Joël Lamotte]

My way of dealing with this problem is similar to other people here:

 1. I have a separate Python post-build script designed to be driven
through command line.
     This script read somewhere the list of direct binary dependencies of
the target[1] and copy them in the
     output directory. The script also check that the dependency file is
not already in that place.
 2. I have CMake scripts that provide project definition macros which does
the actual work
     of setting up the projects depending on the kind but it's all specific
to my project/domain.
 3. The CMake scripts will add a custom post-build command calling the
Python post-build script with the correct arguments for the specific target.
 4. Therefore, after build of any of MY projects of my Visual Studio
solution, the post build script copy the
      necessary dependencies in what I call the "install" directory which
is settup in a way similar to a normal install
      of the application. This happen after the target is generated into
it's output directory; so first the project is compiled
      with it's dependencies, then all these binaries are copied in the
"install" directory.
 5. After generating my VS solution using CMake, the first thing I do is to
change the debug paths of the executables projects
     so that debugging them will actually run the binaries in the "install"
direction. This is because I want that directory to be
     as close as the final directory, so I can catch issues with missing
dlls immediately (and in practice it helped a lot catch any kind of
dependencies and configuration issues)
     It's also easier to generate a test build this way.

Note that:

 - I don't want to polluate the developer's PATH with anything from the
dependencies, which is one reason why I have so many constraints
   (that CMake only solve in half)
 - I want to be able to debug most of my dependencies (for a lot of
reasons) so I NEED to have their sources (except if I have no choice)
   and I NEED to have their sources debuggable and visible from the
debugger.
 - Why can't I use the install command from CMake? My understanding is that
it's used to install the application in the system, which is NOT what I
want to do here.

It's one of the reasons I have found CMake frustrating, there is not much
helping with these kind of contexts.

[1] I didn't find a way to provide the dependencies automatically because
some dlls are simply not part of the project,
     So I have a specific file with all the direct binary dependencies
explicitely listed for each target.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/attachments/20140526/3d829967/attachment.html>