Why was globbing added to CMake?

Development
1

It’s bad practice to use globbing for adding source files. Even so I still decided to learn the hard way.

Even other build systems seem to agree when I read their docs.

So why was it added?

2

For reference, the file(GLOB) option CONFIGURE_DEPENDS was added by CMake MR 1767 in CMake 3.12. See issues linked from that MR for details. The documentation specifically recommends against globbing for source files.

It was added by popular demand for those willing to accept the trade-offs.

3

Gotcha that makes sense :+1: