Passing a list to a CMake macro

Question

I am trying to write a macro which goes through a given list of libraries. However the message call in the macro prints only the first item of the list. What am I doing wron

Answer 1

Your macro should look like this:

macro(FindLibs list_var_name)            
    message( "inside ${${list_var_name}}" )
endmacro()

and call the macro like this:

FindLibs(LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST)

So inside the macro: ${list_var_name} = LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST, ${${list_var_name}} = ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST} = your list.

Another solution could be (somewhat more obscure):

macro(FindLibs)            
    message( "inside ${ARGN}" )
endmacro()

FindLibs(${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST})

In the first solution you pass only the name of the list-variable to the macro (one argument). In the second solution you expand the list before calling the macro and pass N parameters (N = length of the list).