How do I determine which cmake package contains a desired static library?

Question

I have some legacy code (building against the mysql embedded server library) which contains a link line that looks like this:

 -L/usr/local/lib -lmysqld -lm -ldl -lcrypt -lpthread

I know that I can get a list of supported cmake modules with cmake --help-module-list, but how do know which modules contains the libraries libm.a, libdl.a, etc.?

I know that I could use link_directories(/usr/local/lib) to specify that location, and just put -lm, -ldl, etc. into my target_link_libraries command, but the docs seem to discourage that - that using find_library or find_package is desirable.

I can probably muddle through putting together something with find_library that will work with all our target platforms, but if these libraries are already defined in an existing package, I think that would be the most desirable way to do it.

So, the general question is: given some known libraries, how to I locate the relevant cmake package that contains them?

EDIT: There seems to be some confusion about what I'm asking. I understand that find_package doesn't actually "contain" the libraries, but it serves as platform-independent way of locating the libraries for common configurations. For example, in my case above, I found in another SO question that I could deal with the pthread library by using this construction:

set(THREADS_PREFER_PTHREAD_FLAG ON)
find_package(Threads REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(my_app Threads::Threads)

But how was I supposed to know this? Is there a way I can discover this for myself without asking SO questions and hoping someone can answer it for me? And what should I use for the other libraries (m, dl, crypt, etc.).

What is a "cmake package" and should there be one at all? Looks more like an OS/installation than programming problem. — too honest for this site, Jul 29 '17 at 17:11

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 29 '17 at 17:30

given some known libraries, how to I locate the relevant cmake package that contains them?

If corresponded CMake package exists, it usually has a name similar to the name of the library.

Note, that CMake package is not a container for a library (like distro packages are, e.g. mysql-devel). CMake package is simply a script, which finds a library.

Absence of the script doesn't mean absence of the library itself; it means .. that no one has writen such script. Nothing more.

How do I determine which cmake package contains a desired static library?

1 Answers1