CMake ExternalProject_Add() and FindPackage()

Question

Is there are proper way to find a library (via FindPackage()) which was built with ExternalProject_Add()?

The problem is that CMake cannot find the library at CMake-time because the external library gets build at compile time. I know that it is possible to combine these two CMake function when building the library and the project in a superbuild but I want to use it in a normal CMake project.

In fact I would like to build VTK 6 with ExternalProject_Add and find it with FindPackage all inside my CMake project.

Answer 1

there is a way to do this. but it´s kind of hackish. you basically add a custom target, that reruns cmake during build.

you will have to try this in a small test project, to decide if it works for you

find_package(Beaengine)


############################################
#
#    BeaEngine
#
include(ExternalProject)
externalproject_add(BeaEngine
    SOURCE_DIR            ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/beaengine   
    SVN_REPOSITORY        http://beaengine.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
    CMAKE_ARGS            -DoptHAS_OPTIMIZED=TRUE -DoptHAS_SYMBOLS=FALSE -DoptBUILD_64BIT=FALSE -DoptBUILD_DLL=FALSE -DoptBUILD_LITE=FALSE
    INSTALL_COMMAND       ""
 )


if(NOT ${Beaengine_FOUND})
    #rerun cmake in initial build
    #will update cmakecache/project files on first build
    #so you may have to reload project after first build
    add_custom_target(Rescan ${CMAKE_COMMAND} ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR} DEPENDS BeaEngine)
else()
    #Rescan becomes a dummy target after first build
    #this prevents cmake from rebuilding cache/projects on subsequent builds
    add_custom_target(Rescan)
endif()




add_executable(testapp testapp.cpp )
add_dependencies(testapp Rescan)
if(${Beaengine_FOUND})
    target_link_libraries(testapp ${Beaengine_LIBRARY})
endif()

this seems to work well for mingw makefiles / eclipse makefile projects. vs will request to reload all projects after first build.