Target: CMake >= 2.8.3

Goal

Provide a generic method to find "common" libraries (ie a single library without components).

• don't repeat yourself (between modules)
• thanks to function/variable scope, limit conflicts on and exposition of "temporary" variables
• share a same logic to be consistent and coherent instead of restarting from scratch for each find module
• you don't have a time or the knowledge to write a find module, we provide you a common base

Usage

Copy the file CommonFind.cmake to your project's root directory.

Add your project's root directory to CMAKE_MODULE_PATH and include CommonFind in your CMakeLists.txt:

set(CMAKE_MODULE_PATH ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR})

find_package(xxx #[[ your other arguments ]])

# Example
if(xxx_FOUND)
    add_executable(myapp myapp.c)
    include_directories(${xxx_INCLUDE_DIRS})
    target_link_libraries(myapp ${xxx_LIBRARIES})
    # with CMake >= 3.0.0, the last two lines can be replaced by the following
    target_link_libraries(myapp xxx::xxx)
endif(xxx_FOUND)

(replace xxx by the name of your module/library - name is case sensitive)

Create a Findxxx.cmake starting by:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.3)

include(CommonFind)

Then call to common_find_package function. Its arguments are:

• PKG_CONFIG_MODULE_NAME (string): name of the pkg-config component to check (if provided and if pkg-config is available)
• CONFIG_EXECUTABLE (string): name of an external executable from which informations can be extracted (like mysql_config, pg_config, pcre-config, icu-config, ...)
• CONFIG_EXECUTABLE_LIBRARY_ARGUMENTS (string, default: "--libs"): list of arguments to pass to ${CONFIG_EXECUTABLE} to get library path
• CONFIG_EXECUTABLE_INCLUDE_ARGUMENTS (string, default: "--includedir"): list of arguments to pass to ${CONFIG_EXECUTABLE} to get include directory
• LIBRARIES (mandatory, ;-list of strings): name(s) of the library to find
• HEADER (mandatory, string): name of an essential header file to find
• SUFFIXES (;-list of strings): directory names to pass as PATH_SUFFIXES to find_path and find_library
• VERSION_HEADER (string, default: same as HEADER): name of header file where to extract version informations if different of ${HEADER} (unused if pkg-config provide this information)
• VERSION_REGEXPES (;-list of strings): one or more regexp to extract version number(s) from header file.
  • use a single regexp for a dotted version (major.minor.patch) or a numeric version number (eg: 50630)
  • provide 2 to 4 regexpes if major/minor(/patch/tweak) are on seperated lines/macros

See Find*.cmake files for examples.