Thanks for the clarification — this aligns perfectly with the issue I’ve been encountering.
Do you have any estimate on when a fix might be available? I’d really prefer to retain the simplicity of adding external dependencies via full paths, rather than switching to add_library. Unfortunately, the built-in find_package modules also rely on the less optimal approach of returning full paths in variables, which makes them unsuitable.
We’ve put a lot of effort into optimizing the configure step, but the generation phase on Windows continues to be a significant performance bottleneck. Removing unnecessary file reads is definitely a step in the right direction. That said, the real game changer on Windows would be the ability to parallelize the writing of project files, as file I/O is currently a major time sink.