How to announce new optional dependencies? [was: What KDE would like distributions to do]

[Martin Graesslin]

On Monday, March 21, 2016 1:42:29 PM CET Fabian K. wrote:
> Regarding
> 
> > * we need to mark the optional, but in truth required dependencies
> 
> For those dependencies, would it be an option to replace
> 
> find_package(AwesomeLinuxOnlyLib)
> 
> with
> 
> option(UseAwesomeLib "Don't touch if you're a Linux distro" ON)
> 
> if(UseAwesomeLib)
> 
> find_package(AwesomeLinuxOnlyLib REQUIRED)
> 
> endif()
> 
> 
> With that, one would get a build error with the default configuration if
> the
> 
> dependency is not met, and non-Linux distributions could still disable it
> by
> 
> passing -DUseAwesomeLib=OFF to cmake.
> 
> This would cause slightly more work for non-Linux distributions, but I'd
> wager
> 
> that this is not a huge obstacle.

I'm not a huge fan of the idea as:
* it makes the CMakeLists.txt more complex
* it adds additional build options which nobody tests
* it makes non-Linux ignore the option, instead of looking into implementing 
support on their platform

An example for the last point: http://quickgit.kde.org/?
p=kscreenlocker.git&a=commit&h=88a497e4c6b7599cf859703e25d65ba8bb2873ce

of course we want the BSDs to add support for it. If they don't even see it in 
the CMake Output it goes close to never be noticed.

So to me hiding it like proposed here is similar to just telling the BSDs that 
we don't care about them any more.

Cheers
Martin
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