Passing a list to a CMake macro

The provided answers by others are correct. The best solution is indeed to provide the list in double quotes like this:

FindLibs( "${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST}" ) 

But if you really don't want to force the user to use double quotes and also want to see the LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST argument in your macro declaration, here's how I would do it:

macro( FindLibs LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST ) set( _LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST} ${ARGN} ) # Merge them together message( "inside ${_LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST}" ) endmacro() 

And it would be used like this (your expectation):

FindLibs( ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST} ) 

This is nice, because it will force the user to provide at least one library. Calling it like

FindLibs() 

won't work. CMake will report the following error:

FindLibs Macro invoked with incorrect arguments for macro named: FindLibs

If you are using CMake 2.8.3 or newer, another option is to use the CmakeParseArguments, but it will require you to put a keyword argument in front of your list. But this technique is probably the easiest way to manage more than one list, and provides high flexibility. For that reason, it is very handy to know. It is also my preferred way of doing it. Here's how to do it:

include( CMakeParseArguments ) macro( FindLibs ) set( _OPTIONS_ARGS ) set( _ONE_VALUE_ARGS ) set( _MULTI_VALUE_ARGS NAMES DEPENDS ) cmake_parse_arguments( _FINDLIBS "${_OPTIONS_ARGS}" "${_ONE_VALUE_ARGS}" "${_MULTI_VALUE_ARGS}" ${ARGN} ) # Mandatory if( _FINDLIBS_NAMES ) message( STATUS "inside NAMES=${_FINDLIBS_NAMES}" ) else() message( FATAL_ERROR "FindLibs: 'NAMES' argument required." ) endif() # Optional if( _FINDLIBS_DEPENDS ) message( STATUS "inside DEPENDS=${_FINDLIBS_DEPENDS}" ) endif() endmacro() 

Unfortunately, you have to do your argument enforcement yourself, but at least it gives you the option to chose which arguments are mandatory, and which ones are not (DEPENDS is optional in my example above).

And it would be used like this:

FindLibs( NAMES ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST} ) FindLibs( NAMES ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST} DEPENDS ${LIBRARY_DEPENDENCY_LIST} ) # You can change the order FindLibs( DEPENDS ${LIBRARY_DEPENDENCY_LIST} NAMES ${LIBRARY_NAMES_LIST} ) # You can even build your lists on the fly FindLibs( NAMES zlib png jpeg DEPENDS otherProject1 otherProject2 ) 

And if I do this:

FindLibs() # or that: FindLibs( DEPENDS ${LIBRARY_DEPENDENCY_LIST} ) 

Then I would get my custom error message:

error: FindLibs: 'NAMES' argument required.

And here the link to the CMakeParseArguments documentation if you want to learn more about it.

I hope it helps :-)

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).

According to (almost) current CMake documentation, the ${ARGV} symbol should expand to the entire list of arguments. This should keep things simpler at the calling location.