Aggregating Build Information across the entire configure step

Usage
1

We have multiple different ways this arises, but one example is that we don’t use ctest. Instead, we have an in-house testing framework that serves a similar purpose. Our list files specify test executables via a custom function my_add_test_executable(<NAME> <PARAM1> <PARAM2> ...). We then have a top-level program which needs to be able to know about every test executable, as well as the parameters that each call to my_add_test_executable() was invoked with.

So we need to be able to keep track of this over the life of the configure step, and then at the end, output a single manifest / configuration file that contains information about each test executable and all of the parameters the function was called with.

Is there a good pattern / recipe for this kind of thing? I’ve considered using a global property, but this is cumbersome to parse because it’s a list of lists, and cmake doesn’t make dealing with multi-dimensional lists easy.

Is there an easier way?

2

I usually do this by making ad hoc associative properties. Something like:

set_property(GLOBAL APPEND
  PROPERTY my_test_harness_names "${test_name}")
set_property(GLOBAL
  PROPERTY "my_test_harness_${test_name}_command" "${command_args}")
set_property(GLOBAL
  PROPERTY "my_test_harness_${test_name}_workdir" "${working_directory}")

This avoids the “list of lists” problem at least.

3

How do you enumerate all of these properties though? Let’s say you have not just my_test_harness, but also my_second_test_harness and my_fancy_test_harness. I don’t know of a good way to enumerate all global properties in CMake, so you’d have to know in advance what all the different test harnesses were and then set properties as set_property(GLOBAL PROPERTY "${harness_name}_${test_name}_command") etc.

I guess you could keep a second global property which is a list of harness names. Does this sound idiomatic?

4

It sounds suitable to me. I’m not sure there’s an “idiomatic” answer to this right now (other than using part of the variable/property name to store associative data in some way).