cmake - find library - custom library location

Question

I m currently trying to get CMake running for my project  on windows   I want to use a custom location where all libraries are installed  To inform CMake about that path I tried to do that   set CMAKE PREFIX PATH D  develop cmake libs    But when I try to find the library with  find library CURL LIBRARY NAMES curl curllib libcurl imp curllib static    CMake can t find it   When I set my prefix path to  set CMAKE PREFIX PATH D  develop cmake libs curl        the library is located    So my question is   How can I configure CMake properly to work with a directory structore at a custom location which looks like that   D  develop cmake libs  - gt  libA    - gt  include    - gt  lib - gt  libB    - gt  include    - gt  lib - gt         - gt  include    - gt  lib   In  include  lie the public headers and in  lib  are the compiled libraries   Hope someone can help me - Thanks in advance  edit  The current workaround for me is  to do this before i search for libraries   set CUSTOM LIBRARY PATH D  develop cmake libs  file GLOB sub-dir   CUSTOM LIBRARY PATH     foreach dir   sub-dir       if IS DIRECTORY   dir           set CMAKE PREFIX PATH   CMAKE PREFIX PATH    dir       endif   endforeach     But that way the default module for boost wont find it until it because the directory structore of boost is a bit different    boost - gt  include - gt  boost-1 50 - gt    hpp   When I move the content if  boost-1 50  to  include  the library can be found but that way it s not possible to handle multiple versions right

User · Answer

You have one extra level of nesting  CMAKE will search under  CMAKE PREFIX PATH include for headers and  CMAKE PREFIX PATH libs for libraries    From CMAKE documentation      For each path in the CMAKE PREFIX PATH list  CMake will check    PATH include  and  PATH  when FIND PATH   is called   PATH bin  and    PATH  when FIND PROGRAM   is called  and  PATH lib and  PATH  when   FIND LIBRARY   is called

User · Answer

I saw that two people put that question to their favorites so I will try to answer the solution which works for me  Instead of using find modules I m writing configuration files for all libraries which are installed  Those files are extremly simple and can also be used to set non-standard variables  CMake will  at least on windows  search for those configuration files in   CMAKE PREFIX PATH  lt  lt package name gt  gt - lt  lt version gt  gt   lt  lt package name gt  gt -config cmake    which can be set through an environment variable   So for example the boost configuration is in the path  CMAKE PREFIX PATH boost-1 50 boost-config cmake   In that configuration you can set variables  My config file for boost looks like that   set boost INCLUDE DIRS   boost DIR  include  set boost LIBRARY DIR   boost DIR  lib  foreach component   boost FIND COMPONENTS        set boost LIBRARIES   boost LIBRARIES  debug   boost LIBRARY DIR  libboost   component -vc110-mt-gd-1 50 lib      set boost LIBRARIES   boost LIBRARIES  optimized   boost LIBRARY DIR  libboost   component -vc110-mt-1 50 lib  endforeach   add definitions  -D WIN32 WINNT 0x0501     Pretty straight forward   it s possible to shrink the size of the config files even more when you write some helper functions  The only issue I have with this setup is that I havn t found a way to give config files a priority over find modules - so you need to remove the find modules   Hope this this is helpful for other people

User · Answer

I ve encountered a similar scenario  I solved it by adding in this following code just before find library     set CMAKE PREFIX PATH  the custom path to your lib     then it can find the library location

User · Answer

The simplest solution may be to add HINTS to each find   request   For example   find library CURL LIBRARY     NAMES curl curllib libcurl imp curllib static     HINTS    CMAKE PREFIX PATH  curl lib      For Boost I would strongly recommend using the FindBoost standard module and setting the BOOST DIR variable to point to your Boost libraries

User · Answer

Use CMAKE PREFIX PATH by adding multiple paths  separated by semicolons and no white spaces   You can set it as an environmental variable to avoid having absolute paths in your cmake configuration files  Notice that cmake will look for config file in any of the following folders where  is any of the path in CMAKE PREFIX PATH  and name is the name of the library you are looking for   lt prefix gt                                                  W   lt prefix gt   cmake CMake                                    W   lt prefix gt   lt name gt                                           W   lt prefix gt   lt name gt    cmake CMake                            W   lt prefix gt   lib  lt arch gt  lib share  cmake  lt name gt              U   lt prefix gt   lib  lt arch gt  lib share   lt name gt                    U   lt prefix gt   lib  lt arch gt  lib share   lt name gt    cmake CMake     U    In your case you need to add to CMAKE PREFIX PATH the following two paths   D  develop cmake libs libA D  develop cmake libB

User · Answer

There is no way to automatically set CMAKE PREFIX PATH in a way you want  I see following ways to solve this problem    Put all libraries files in the same dir  That is  include  would contain headers for all libs  lib  - binaries  etc  FYI  this is common layout for most UNIX-like systems  Set global environment variable CMAKE PREFIX PATH to D  develop cmake libs libA D  develop cmake libs libB      When you run CMake  it would aautomatically pick up this env var and populate it s own CMAKE PREFIX PATH  Write a wrapper  bat script  which would call cmake command with -D CMAKE PREFIX PATH     argument

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