gtest.a vs gtest_main.a inconsistency

[travisdowns]

The make/Makefile build and the CMake build generate gtest_main.a very differently: the make build includes all of gtest.a in gtest_main.a so you only need to link to gtest_main.a, while in the CMake build the gtest_main.a is very small and only includes the main() function itself, so you need to link to both gtest.a and gtest_main.a.

Since CMake is the primary build system (from what I understand), one could assume the latter approach is the correct one, but the documentation seems to contradict this - directly in the CMakeLists.txt file we have

# Defines the gtest & gtest_main libraries.  User tests should link
# with one of them.

Some more details in this SO answer which also shows some of the confusion this has sowed.

[absassi]

For the sake of completeness, I'd like to add that the gmock_main library does include gmock and gtest when built by CMake or by make/Makefile. When using Autotools, the gtest_main built by Makefile.am includes gtest (like make/Makefile) and the gmock_main includes gmock but not gtest (unlike any other).

To summarize, the contents of each library are:

Build method	gtest	gtest_main	gmock	gmock_main
CMake	gtest	gtest_main	gtest, gmock	gtest, gmock, gmock_main
Makefile	gtest	gtest, gtest_main	gtest, gmock	gtest, gmock, gmock_main
Autotools	gtest	gtest, gtest_main	gmock	gmock, gmock_main