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Adding a Find Module for Third-Party Libraries

VisIt_ uses custom Find modules for most of its dependent third-party libraries. The Find modules live in src/CMake and most of them utilize special functions that live in src/CMake/SetUpThirdParty.cmake. The most important of these is SET_UP_THIRD_PARTY, as it does the bulk of the work in determining platform-specific extensions, handles .so versioning and Windows dll's and import libraries.

The first argument to the function is the name of the package (eg FOO), and it expects a capitalized package name that corresponds to a VISIT_<PKG>_DIR entry in VisIt_'s config-site files. This function also uses these keyword arguments:

LIBS: required
The name(s) of the library(ies) without platform-specific prefixes, suffixes or extensions. For example: SETUP_THIRD_PARTY(FOO LIBS foo1 foo2), not SETUP_THIRD_PARTY(FOO LIBS libfoo1.so libfoo2.so).
LIBDIR: optional
The paths beyond VISIT_<PKG>_DIR where the libraries may be found. VISIT_<PKG>_DIR/lib or VISIT_<PKG>_DIR>/lib64 will be assumed if this is not provided.
INCDIR: optional
The path beyond VISIT_<PKG>_DIR where the headers may be found. VISIT_<PKG>_DIR/include will be assumed if this is not provided.

There may be situations where this simple solution is not sufficient: a package may have already created its own Find module and duplication of effort isn't desired; or the package may be complex with many components all of which may not necessarily be needed by VisIt_ (e.g. VTK). For situations where this function is not sufficient, standard CMake find calls (find_path, find_library, find_package) may be used along with the necessary special INSTALL commands for ensuring the package's libraries (and possibly headers) are installed alongside VisIt_.

The INSTALL commands that VisIt_ uses are custom functions:

THIRD_PARTY_INSTALL_LIBRARY(LIBFILE):

Installs the library file.

LIBFILE is the full path to a library file.

THIRD_PARTY_INSTALL_INCLUDE(pkg incdir)

Installs pkg's headers.

pkg is the name of the package.

incdir1 is the full path to the headers (root of include tree if it involves multiple subdirectories).