Understanding exports_sources and CMake's add_subdirectory

Hello Kings of the swamp,

My understanding is that when I have something like:

    exports_sources = "CMakeLists.txt", "src/*", "tools/*", "tests/*", "include/*"

conan create would take all of these and place it in the .conan/... (aka the recipe). I also realized, though I’m not sure, that if code in tests/CMakeLists.txt need some package to link with, e.g. boost but the rest of the tree does not need it, since I have it in exports_sources it is as if the entire package needs boost.

Now, I also figured out that add_subdirectory() need to match the above exports_sources list. In other words, if I have add_subdirectory(tests) and I remove tests/* from the above list, I have an error:

CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:43 (add_subdirectory):
  add_subdirectory given source "tests" which is not an existing directory.
...
ERROR: foo/1.1.1: Error in build() method, line 41
	cmake.configure()
	ConanException: Error 1 while executing cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=..."

But I don’t want tests/*. I don’t need it in the recipe. I don’t need the dependencies. How do I remove tests/* without the above error. Surely there is a way.

Thanks! Kobi

[kobi-ca]

thank you @memsharded !!

[memsharded]

I think it might be related to the nature of build_requires, not intended to be used via ``find_package(), and this also depends on if you are using the “build” and “host” profiles. The direction should be:

• Put boost as self.requires("boost...", force_host_context=True) inside requirements(), this indicates this dep is in the “host” context.
• That should handle the transitive dependencies too (using the new CMakeDeps integrations.
• Recommended to use the --profile:build explicitly, to start opting-in in what will be the default behavior in 2.0 and in ConanCenter soon too.