[CMake] "Pre-configure" step in CMake

[Matthäus G. Chajdas]

Hi,

how does the ExternalProject interact with subsequent find_library calls?

I've seen projects building dependencies through ExternalProject, but
those would the project manually by querying ExternalProject and adding
a new imported target. How would I connect an ExternalProject to one or
more find_library calls?

Is there a downside from configure taking an unknown amount of time? My
expectation was that there is no timeout for the configure step.

Cheers,
  Matthäus

Am 24.09.2015 um 22:30 schrieb Bill Hoffman:
> On 9/24/2015 4:26 PM, Matthäus G. Chajdas wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> that sounds like it would do the trick. I wasn't aware that
>> execute_process will block the script until it's done executing. Need to
>> check this out but that definitely looks like the way to go, thanks!
> ExternalProject might be a better option.  It pushes the downloads to
> build time and handles dependencies without having to re-run CMake.  If
> you run a download script at CMake time, it could take an unknown amount
> of time to configure.
> 
> -Bill
> 
>