# How do I pull full paths out of UNRESOLVED\_DEPENDENCIES\_VAR

**URL:** https://discourse.cmake.org/t/how-do-i-pull-full-paths-out-of-unresolved-dependencies-var/1945
**Category:** Code
**Created:** [September 29, 2020, 6:49pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/how-do-i-pull-full-paths-out-of-unresolved-dependencies-var/1945 "2020-09-29T18:49:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![NotSven](https://discourse.cmake.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f6c823/32.png) [@NotSven](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/NotSven)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2020, 6:49pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/how-do-i-pull-full-paths-out-of-unresolved-dependencies-var/1945/1 "2020-09-29T18:49:32Z")

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Very first post, please remove if silly.

I’ve got something like this in my setup :

file(GET\_RUNTIME\_DEPENDENCIES  
RESOLVED\_DEPENDENCIES\_VAR RES  
UNRESOLVED\_DEPENDENCIES\_VAR **UNRES**  
CONFLICTING\_DEPENDENCIES\_PREFIX CONFLICTING\_DEPENDENCIES  
EXECUTABLES $\<TARGET\_FILE:${targetName}\>)

My goal is to be able to install the dependencies on any dev machine.  
**UNRES** only contains a list of API files (msvc toolset) as it doesn’t know where they are, just that the target needs them.

I’ve attempted to couple this with find\_path() but it’ll return the local path where it’s expected to be in the target, not the actual path to that dll.

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### Author: ![ben.boeckel](https://discourse.cmake.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2020, 11:14pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/how-do-i-pull-full-paths-out-of-unresolved-dependencies-var/1945/2 "2020-09-29T23:14:17Z")

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They’re unresolved because it is unknown where they live. Otherwise they’d be in `RES` in your example 🙂 .

As for the `ms-api-` and other similar DLLs, these are “fake” DLLs and are a technique Microsoft is using to make ABI compatibility more granular (instead of a single massive MSVCRT DLL). See the discussion [here](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/get-runtime-dependencies-has-difficulties-with-windows-api-sets/1768) for more details on it and a potential mechanism CMake can provide to help users out with these specific DLLs.

Cc: @kyle.edwards

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### Author: ![NotSven](https://discourse.cmake.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f6c823/32.png) [@NotSven](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/NotSven)
#### Post date: [September 30, 2020, 5:06pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/how-do-i-pull-full-paths-out-of-unresolved-dependencies-var/1945/3 "2020-09-30T17:06:36Z")

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Oh, of course, that would make sense… 😅  
Following the discussion helped a lot, thank you Ben!