# "Custom" language setup on Windows

**URL:** <https://discourse.cmake.org/t/custom-language-setup-on-windows/4194>\
**Category:** Code\
**Tags:** os:windows, gen:makefiles\
**Created:** [October 3, 2021, 8:24am UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/custom-language-setup-on-windows/4194 "2021-10-03T08:24:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![krasznaa](https://discourse.cmake.org/user_avatar/discourse.cmake.org/krasznaa/32/893_2.png) [@krasznaa](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/krasznaa)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2021, 8:24am UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/custom-language-setup-on-windows/4194/1 "2021-10-03T08:24:08Z")

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Dear All,

I’m playing with something a bit convoluted… I am setting up a custom language for my project through a set of `CMakeDetermine<LANG>Compiler.cmake`, `CMake<LANG>Information.cmake`, etc. modules. A bit unwillingly, but I learned a lot about CMake’s internals along the way… 😛

I’m running into an issue now that I can just not figure out, but others may know the answer right away. On Windows the `<TARGET>` keyword/placeholder in the `CMAKE_<LANG>_CREATE_SHARED_LIBRARY` that I defined keeps being expanded to `<target name>.dll.<version>`. Instead of just `<target name>.dll`, as it is done for C++ for instance.

This is not a fatal problem at the moment, since my build just ends up creating 3 instances of my DLL right now, with names:

- `<target name>.dll.<version>`
- `<target name>.dll.<soversion>`
- `<target name>.dll`

So… using a \*nix naming scheme for the shared libraries.

I really don’t want to remove the `VERSION` and `SOVERSION` properties from my shared libraries, because

- on Linux they work fine;
- even on Windows the value of `VERSION` is still used correctly when setting up the `/version:<TARGET_VERSION_MAJOR>.<TARGET_VERSION_MINOR>` argument for the linker.

What did I forget about? What else would I need to set up in “my” language’s configuration to let CMake know that shared libraries with this language should be called `<target name>.dll` on windows?

Cheers,  
Attila

P.S. Of course all of this is happening with the “NMake Makefiles” generator. As teaching the VS generator would require C++ changes to CMake as well, which I really want to avoid for this project.