Gracefully create symbolic link for static libs like for shared libs

Code
1

As we know, only for Shared Libs, a symbolic link is created automatically, not for Static Libs.
For example:
If we have a target libLeonLog.so.1.2.3, we will get a symbolic link libLeonlog.so and libLeonLog.so.1 that is pointing to the real target libLeonLog.so.1.2.3.

Now I want to do the same for my static lib.
At first, I defined my lib like this:

add_library( target_static STATIC LogToFile.cpp )
set_target_properties( target_static PROPERTIES
	OUTPUT_NAME_RELEASE  LeonLog
	OUTPUT_NAME_DEBUG    LeonLog
	PUBLIC_HEADER        LeonLog.hpp
	VERSION              ${PROJECT_VERSION}
	SUFFIX               ".a.${PROJECT_VERSION}"
#[[  Here I want keep the property "PREFIX" in default value('lib'), so I removed this line:
        PREFIX    "lib"
]]
)

install( TARGETS target_static
	ARCHIVE DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR}
	PUBLIC_HEADER DESTINATION ${CMAKE_INSTALL_INCLUDEDIR}
)

And then, I’m trying to add a symbolic link by means of running a shell command when installing.
Like this:

get_target_property( MY_NAME target_static ARCHIVE_OUTPUT_NAME_RELEASE )
message( STATUS "MY_NAME:\"${MY_NAME}\"" )
install( CODE "execute_process(
	COMMAND ln -fs ${MY_NAME}.${PROJECT_VERSION} ${MY_NAME}
	WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR} )" )

But I can NOT get the value of PROPERTY “ARCHIVE_OUTPUT_NAME_RELEASE”, I got a empty string.
I have also tried many other properties, but all failed.
like this:

get_target_property( MY_NAME target_static LIBRARY_OUTPUT_NAME_RELEASE )
message( STATUS "LIBRARY_OUTPUT_NAME_RELEASE:\"${MY_NAME}\"" )
get_property( MY_NAME TARGET target_static PROPERTY OUTPUT_NAME )
message( STATUS "OUTPUT_NAME:\"${MY_NAME}\"" )

Finally, I have to compose it by myself, like this:

get_target_property( MY_NAME target_static OUTPUT_NAME_RELEASE )
# compose it with adding a prefix, but it's hard coding!
set( MY_NAME "lib${MY_NAME}.a" )
message( STATUS "MY_NAME:\"${MY_NAME}\"" )
install( CODE "execute_process(
	COMMAND ln -fs ${MY_NAME}.${PROJECT_VERSION} ${MY_NAME}
	WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR} )" )

But I think it is ugly, and not the correct way.

Is there an “Official” way to do this?
Sorry for my English!

2

I’m going to start here…why? There’s no purpose to SONAME or SOVERSION filenames for static libraries as they have no runtime existence.

3

For example:
I’m developing the new version of my project(let’s call it Octopus-2.0), meanwhile I have to maintain/bugfix the producing version of the same project(Octopus-1.0).

The project Octopus depends on another project LeonLog that has two versions too, and Octopus-2.0 should be linked against the static libs of LeonLog-5.0, and Octopus-1.0 should keep to use LeonLog-3.0 still.

Hence I keep multiple versions of LeonLog’s static libs existing at /usr/local/lib, and need to frequently switch between those two.
Like this:

leon@galvatron:~$ ls /usr/local/lib
lrwxrwxrwx 1 leon leon   18 2024-03-24 23:29 libLeonLog.a -> libLeonLog.a.5.0.5
-rw-r--r-- 1 leon leon 207K 2023-11-03 15:23 libLeonLog.a.3.7.2
-rw-r--r-- 1 leon leon 214K 2024-03-24 23:29 libLeonLog.a.5.0.5

Is there any better method?

4

Put the version number in the library name itself.

set_property(TARGET ${tgt}
  PROPERTY
    OUTPUT_NAME "${tgt}-${major_version}")