Re: [CMake] external project CONFIGURE_COMMAND adds quotation to arguments

Eric Doenges Wed, 04 Sep 2019 03:23:14 -0700

On 04.09.2019 11:55, Edoardo Pasca wrote:

Dear all,

I'm using ExternalProjectAdd to build an external package.

On the CONFIGURE_COMMAND I have to pass some variables to the configure script in this form:

configure CPPFLAGS="-I/dir/include -L/dir/lib"

To do this I use

CONFIGURE_COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E env ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/configure CPPFLAGS="-I/dir/include -L/dir/lib"

However, when cmake issues that command (you can see that with make VERBOSE=1) it wraps the CPPFLAGS parameters with quotation marks (as below) and the configure script fails

configure "CPPFLAGS=\"-I/dir/include -L/dir/lib\""

Below you can find a minimal CMakeLists.txt to test this.

I'd appreciate any help on how I'd remove those quotation marks.

Thanks

Edo

What I do is let CMake handle this itself by defining a (list) variable for the configure command:

set(cmd "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/configure")

list(APPEND cmd "CPPFLAGS=-I/dir/include -L/dir/lib")

ExternalProject_Add(...

CONFIGURE_COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E env ${cmd}

...)

Since cmd is a list, CMake knows that the -L/dir/lib belongs to the CPPFLAGS=-I/dir/include part, and puts double quotes around the entire thing, e.g. the actual command line will look something like this:

<xxx>/configure "CPPFLAG=-Idir/include -L/dir/lib"

This works with GNU autoconf. I've found that in general, dealing with quoting in ExternalProject_Add is a gigantic pain, so if the method above is not sufficient, I use configure_file or file(WRITE) to generate a shell script (Linux) or batch file (Windows) with the correct parameters and call that instead.

With kind regards,
Eric Dönges

Dr. Eric Dönges
Senior Software Engineer

Geschäftsführer: Dr. Wolfgang Eckstein, Dr. Olaf Munkelt
Amtsgericht München HRB 114695

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Re: [CMake] external project CONFIGURE_COMMAND adds quotation to arguments

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