Passing a list to a CMake macro

Question

I am trying to write a macro which goes through a given list of libraries. However the message call in the macro prints only the first item of the list. What am I doing wrong here?

Code:

    macro( FindLibs LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST )
        message( "inside ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST}" )
    endmacro()

    set( LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST lib1 lib2 lib3)
    message( "outside ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST}" )
    FindLibs(${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST})

Output:

message( "outside lib1 lib2 lib3" )
message( "inside lib1" )

Answer 1

Quote the variable as you pass it to the macro:

FindLibs("${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST}")

Answer 2

The provided answers by others are correct. The best solution is indeed to provide the list in double quotes like this:

FindLibs( "${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST}" )

But if you really don't want to force the user to use double quotes and also want to see the LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST argument in your macro declaration, here's how I would do it:

macro( FindLibs LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST )
    set( _LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST} ${ARGN} ) # Merge them together
    message( "inside ${_LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST}" )
endmacro()

And it would be used like this (your expectation):

FindLibs( ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST} )

This is nice, because it will force the user to provide at least one library. Calling it like

FindLibs()

won't work. CMake will report the following error:

FindLibs Macro invoked with incorrect arguments for macro named: FindLibs

If you are using CMake 2.8.3 or newer, another option is to use the CmakeParseArguments, but it will require you to put a keyword argument in front of your list. But this technique is probably the easiest way to manage more than one list, and provides high flexibility. For that reason, it is very handy to know. It is also my preferred way of doing it. Here's how to do it:

include( CMakeParseArguments )

macro( FindLibs )

    set( _OPTIONS_ARGS )
    set( _ONE_VALUE_ARGS )
    set( _MULTI_VALUE_ARGS NAMES DEPENDS )

    cmake_parse_arguments( _FINDLIBS "${_OPTIONS_ARGS}" "${_ONE_VALUE_ARGS}" "${_MULTI_VALUE_ARGS}" ${ARGN} )

    # Mandatory
    if( _FINDLIBS_NAMES )
        message( STATUS "inside NAMES=${_FINDLIBS_NAMES}" )
    else()
        message( FATAL_ERROR "FindLibs: 'NAMES' argument required." )
    endif()

    # Optional
    if( _FINDLIBS_DEPENDS )
        message( STATUS "inside DEPENDS=${_FINDLIBS_DEPENDS}" )
    endif()

endmacro()

Unfortunately, you have to do your argument enforcement yourself, but at least it gives you the option to chose which arguments are mandatory, and which ones are not (DEPENDS is optional in my example above).

And it would be used like this:

FindLibs( NAMES ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST} )
FindLibs( NAMES ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST} DEPENDS ${LIBRARY_DEPENDENCY_LIST} )

# You can change the order
FindLibs( DEPENDS ${LIBRARY_DEPENDENCY_LIST} NAMES ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST} )

# You can even build your lists on the fly
FindLibs(
    NAMES
       zlib
       png
       jpeg
    DEPENDS
       otherProject1
       otherProject2
)

And if I do this:

FindLibs()

# or that:
FindLibs( DEPENDS ${LIBRARY_DEPENDENCY_LIST} )

Then I would get my custom error message:

error: FindLibs: 'NAMES' argument required.

And here the link to the CMakeParseArguments documentation if you want to learn more about it.

I hope it helps :-)