Help with find_package with nested libs

Usage
1

I am a CMake beginner and I’m a bit confused with the find_package command when using nested libraries.

In my project, I used the following command:

find_package(aaa COMPONENTS bbb REQUIRED)

bbb is correctly found, but then I cannot proceed because of this error that puzzles me:

  The following imported targets are referenced, but are missing:
  ccc

ccc is the name of another library, that is linked by bbb. It’s a low-level library and I think that the author of bbb wanted to keep it private when he designed it.

So, how can I proceed to use bbb without “exposing” ccc?

(Btw, I tried to " hack" its cmakelists.txt to expose it, but then I got the same issue with many other libs, i.e. ddd, eee, etc. internally used by ccc)

2

If the ccc library only brings compile usage requirements (i.e., no IMPORTED targets to link to or the like), linking $<BUILD_INTERFACE:ccc> would keep it from its install. Wtih CMake 3.26 will have $<BUILD_LOCAL_INTERFACE> to hide it from all exports.