[SOLVED] Debug CMake find_library

Issue

Is it possible to debug find_library from CMake?

What I want is a list of considered paths. My use case is a call like

find_library (FOO_LIBRARY
              NAMES foo foo.so.0)

and there is /lib64/libfoo.so.0 on my system. However CMake does not find it. I checked that FIND_LIBRARY_USE_LIB64_PATHS is set to TRUE.

Solution

With CMake 3.17 this got added:

The “CMAKE_FIND_DEBUG_MODE” variable was introduced to print extra find call information during the cmake run to standard error. Output is designed for human consumption and not for parsing.

So you pass either -DCMAKE_FIND_DEBUG_MODE=ON or --debug-find to your CMake command.

Here is an example output when searching for libFOO:

find_library considered the following locations:

/usr/local/lib64/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/usr/local/lib/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/usr/local/lib64/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/usr/local/lib/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/usr/local/lib64/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/usr/local/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/usr/lib64/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/usr/lib/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/usr/lib64/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/usr/lib/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/usr/lib64/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/usr/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/lib64/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/lib/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)
/opt/(lib)FOO(\.so|\.a)

The item was not found.

Answered By - usr1234567

Answer Checked By - Mary Flores (WPSolving Volunteer)