On 09/29/2011 01:30 AM, Clifford Yapp wrote: > On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 2:47 AM, Michael Wild <them...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> Only if your installation is broken ;-) If the symlink is broken, I >> consider this to be a user-error. Period. OTOH, CMake /could/ check >> whether the library is a symlink, and if it is, check that it is valid. >> > > Oh, no question the installation is broken. I'd just expect find_library to > do whatever minimal validation it can easily do and not return invalid cases > it can spot - checking for symlink and whether it's valid would catch one > general class of error, and perhaps a quick check to see if the file is a > binary or a text file would be another. Not perfect, but such tests should > be relatively simple and would improve the utility of find_library.
What do you do on systems which have no idea of symbolic links, e.g. previous Windows versions? Adding more platform-specific code to the sources of the FIND_LIBRARY() function? Furthermore, the kernels of *nix systems hardly distinguish between binary files and text files; usually, they know just "files" with the limited exception of being able to recognize the native executable formats and the #! shebang. The detection of the diverse file types is typically implemented in utility programs, notably the file(1) utility. >> But how do you test whether a library is "linkable"? >> > > Not sure - autoconf has some sort of test that works in at least some cases > in their AC_CHECK_LIB macro, but I'm not really clear on what it does. Even > if such a test wouldn't catch all cases, mightn't it be useful to fail when > available tests do detect a problem? What do you do if the library found by FIND_LIBRARY() has a non-native binary format, e.g. for cross-compiling purposes? How do you select the right set of tools to check the library in question without the user's ado? IMO, FIND_LIBRARY()'s job is to find library files, and a general check whether these files are valid/usable/linkable and not dangling symlinks or whatever is beyond the scope of this function; ensuring that is rather the realm of system administration. > Cheers, > CY Regards, Michael -- Powered by www.kitware.com Visit other Kitware open-source projects at http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html Please keep messages on-topic and check the CMake FAQ at: http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe: http://www.cmake.org/mailman/listinfo/cmake
