It's also handy to get installation paths from GNUInstallDirs
https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.4/module/GNUInstallDirs.html especially if
you expect to install libs on linux which either go to lib or lib64.
many things that install to windows just supply a standard base path
(/program files/<your app>) and then still use bin, lib, share, etc in that
path...
It is an annoyance to have to override dll installation to bin instead of
lib on windows....
include( GNUInstallDirs )
if( WIN32 )
set( BINARY_OUTPUT_DIR ${CMAKE_INSTALL_BINDIR} )
set( SHARED_LIBRARY_OUTPUT_DIR ${CMAKE_INSTALL_BINDIR} )
set( SHARED_LIBRARY_LINK_DIR ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR} )
else( WIN32 )
set( BINARY_OUTPUT_DIR ${CMAKE_INSTALL_BINDIR} )
set( SHARED_LIBRARY_OUTPUT_DIR ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR} )
set( SHARED_LIBRARY_LINK_DIR ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR} )
endif( WIN32 )
and then use the aliased path instead
macro( install_my_thing )
install( TARGETS ${ARGV}
RUNTIME DESTINATION ${BINARY_OUTPUT_DIR}
LIBRARY DESTINATION ${SHARED_LIBRARY_OUTPUT_DIR}
ARCHIVE DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR} )
endmacro( install_my_thing )
People will inevitably also respond and say 'but dlls install as runtime'
which is probably true these days. All I can do is copy the cmake stuff I
have that definitely works; which has been around since 2.6 or something...
So it's probably simpler than what I've shared above.
On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 4:08 AM, Eric Noulard <eric.noul...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>
> 2017-07-27 12:28 GMT+02:00 David Demelier <demelier.da...@gmail.com>:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm still trying to find a correct solution to handle user specified
>> installation paths.
>>
>> Let's consider two kind of paths:
>>
>> - WITH_BINDIR (default: bin/) where to install executables,
>> - WITH_DATADIR (default: share/project_name/) where to install extra
>> data.
>>
>> I want to let the user configuring those paths because not all
>> distributions use the same paths (e.g. bin vs usr/bin).
>>
>> Then, I also like to build the whole CMake project by creating the
>> hierarchy as it would be installed like:
>>
>> <binarydir>/WITH_BINDIR/myapp
>> <binarydir>/WITH_DATADIR/somestuff.txt
>>
>
> Do you mean here that you setup CMAKE_<XXXX>_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY (variable or
> target property) to your favorite value
> or
> You build and then install with the <binarydir>/ prefix?
>
>
>>
>> Using relative paths makes the application relocatable, if I keep
>> WITH_BINDIR set as "bin" I can get the executable path at runtime, going
>> through its parent (bin/../) and then I can go share/project_name.
>> Obviously this is only valid for relative paths.
>>
>> However, a very high number of package managers build programs by
>> specifying absolute paths, it is not an issue: instead of getting the
>> directories at runtime, I use directly the absolute ones.
>>
>> On unix it can still work because it will just be translated as:
>>
>> <binarydir>/usr/local/bin/myapp
>> <binarydir>/usr/local/share/project_name/somestuff.txt
>>
>> This is much bigger an issue on Windows if the user set WITH_BINDIR to
>> something like D:/alt/bin
>>
>> The path would be translated to
>>
>> <binarydir>D:/alt/bin
>>
>> which is invalid on Windows.
>>
>> I like very much having this kind of `fakeroot' directory where you can
>> have a preview on how the project looks like but I don't know what to do if
>> paths are absolute, especially on Windows.
>>
>
> My opinion is that you should never use absolute path (besides some very
> specific case on unix where you want to put something in /etc/...)
> You should ask your user for
>
> DATADIR
> BINDIR
> etc...
>
> all those var should be relative path.
>
> and an eventual
> INSTALL_PREFIX
> which could be absolute.
>
> In any case if you really want to tolerate absolute path given by the
> user, but still want to mimic install location during the build
> then you'll have to escape it.
>
> For each path you expect from the user:
>
> check the path with if(IS_ABSOLUTE path) and compute some relative path
> a) if you are on Windows remove the drive letter, i.e. D:/alt/bin
> becomes alt/bin
> (or network drive share name //shairedisk/alt/bin becomes
> alt/bin)
> b) if you are on Unix
>
>
>>
>> What are your thoughts on that, recommandations?
>>
>
> I wouldn't try to mimic install tree during the build (if it is what you
> are doing),
> If I have a need to "verify" install tree structure then **after the
> build** I would do a fake install with a particular
> local prefix (as CPack does before packaging).
>
> Note that for similar reason CPack has to track files installed with
> absolute destination and
> possibly error out when it cannot handle it, particularly on Windows
> oriented generator:
> see e.g.:
> https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.7/variable/CPACK_ERROR_ON_
> ABSOLUTE_INSTALL_DESTINATION.html
>
> AFAIK, IFW and NSIS do not work with, absolute installed files.
>
>
> --
> Eric
>
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>
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