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cmakepackagelibrariesdifference

Package vs Library

I've just started working with CMake and I noticed that they have both a find_package and a find_library. And this confuses me. Can somebody explain the difference between a package and a library in the world of programming? Or, in the world of CMake?

Appreciate it, guys!

Solution

  • Imagine you want to use zlib in your project, you need to find the header file zlib.h, and the library libz.so (on Linux). You can use the low-level cmake commands find_path and find_library to find them, or you can use find_package(ZLIB). The later command will try to find out all what is necessary to use zlib. It can be extra macro definitions, or dependencies.

    Update, more detail about find_package: when the CMake command find_package(SomeThing) is called, as in the documentation, there are two possible modes that cmake can run:

    • the module mode (that searches for a file FindSomeThing.cmake)
    • or the config mode (that searches for a file named SomeThingConfig.cmake)

    For ZLIB, there is a module named FindZLIB, shipped with CMake itself (on my Linux machine that is the file /usr/share/cmake/Modules/FindZLIB.cmake). That module is a CMake script that uses the CMake API to search for ZLIB files in default locations, or ask the user for the location if it cannot be found automatically.