Re: [Boost-cmake] Variant Builds and missing libraries

Subject: Re: [Boost-cmake] Variant Builds and missing libraries
From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-11-12 11:39:14

on Wed Nov 12 2008, Michael Jackson <mike.jackson-AT-bluequartz.net> wrote:

> Came across an interesting situation while doing some testing on the
> CMake build system. I configured my build tree to be SHARED+MULTI-
> THREADED+DEBUG. When I built I was almost immediately getting an error
> about not being able to link against boost_test_exec_monitor-mt-
> shared. Which is wrong because test_exec_monitor is a static-only
> library. As I walked through the CMake code to track down what was the
> problem I basically discovered for myself that if you have
> BUILD_STATIC=OFF then NO static libraries will be built, which has the
> side effect of disabling any regression test that relies on the
> test_exec_monitor.
>
>    Question: Is this desired behavior? (I wouldn't think so but I
> would rather hear that from a boost dev)

Well, you'd need a Boost-CMake dev, of which there are few, to tell you
what BUILD_STATIC=OFF is supposed to mean.  However, my guess is that
it's really for deciding which library variants you're going to build
and install, not what can get built as part of a dependency chain.
Frankly, even in the build/install case, it seems implausible that
people could be unhappy when a static-only library is built statically
when the shared variant is requested.  I would err on the side of
building rather than not building, and let people use --without-libname
or whatever its CMake equivalent is if they want to leave it out.

>   Comment: I have a solution in place where I added another optional
> argument to the boost_add_library macro that is located in
> BoostCore.cmake. The argument is FORCE_VARIANTS followed by the type
> of variant that you want to make. So the call to this macro for the
> test_exec_monitor looks like the following:
>
> boost_add_library(boost_test_exec_monitor
>   NO_SHARED
>   compiler_log_formatter.cpp
>   debug.cpp
>   execution_monitor.cpp
>   framework.cpp
>   plain_report_formatter.cpp
>   progress_monitor.cpp
>   results_collector.cpp
>   results_reporter.cpp
>   test_main.cpp
>   test_tools.cpp
>   unit_test_log.cpp
>   unit_test_main.cpp
>   unit_test_monitor.cpp
>   unit_test_parameters.cpp
>   unit_test_suite.cpp
>   xml_log_formatter.cpp
>   xml_report_formatter.cpp
>   FORCE_VARIANTS STATIC
>   )
>
> This takes care of case where boost_test_exec_monitor was NOT being
> built but I still have the case of adding a regression test does not
> work. From boost/libs/config/test/CMakeLists.txt:
>
>   boost_test_run(limits_test DEPENDS boost_test_exec_monitor)
>
> which will still fail because the current cmake code will look for
> some other variant (MT-SHARED) of the boost_test_exec_monitor library.

Problem.

> Question: Should I somehow hard code into boost_test_run() a
> conditional test for the test_exec_monitor library being needed and
> link to the proper library?

Better than nothing, but...

> Somehow seems "wrong" to do it that way. 

Yep.

> I really feel like I am missing something that probably was already
> implemented.

IMO, NO_SHARED should mean when looking for a shared variant, pick the
static one instead... and vice versa for NO_STATIC if we have that.

Cheers,

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com