Hello, the usual way to pass a generator string to the cmake executable on the command line is: cmake . -G"Unix Makefiles"
But when i have some bash scripting around it and try to hold the command line arguments in a variable, the trouble begins... export CMDLINE=". -G\"Unix Makefiles\"" && cmake $CMDLINE -> CMake Error: Could not create named generator "Unix The reason seems to be bash separates arguments by spaces, and does not care for the quotes. I tried to escape the space character somehow, but nothing seems to help: export CMDLINE=". -G\"Unix\ Makefiles\"" && cmake $CMDLINE -> CMake Error: Could not create named generator "Unix\ export CMDLINE=". -G'Unix Makefiles'" && cmake $CMDLINE -> CMake Error: Could not create named generator 'Unix Now there might be ways how to work around this in bash. E.g. by quoting arguments on their own as done here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42111441/how-to-pass-command-line-arguments-with-spaces-through-a-variable-in-bash or here https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/108635/why-i-cant-escape-spaces-on-a-bash-script But this is more complicated, harder to understand and maintain - not a nice solution. Looking around, i do not seem to be alone with this kind of problem. Example https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20570042/calling-cmake-with-bash-variable-argument So here is my plea to the CMake developers and feature request: Could you please let CMake support this kind of command line? cmake . -GUnix_Makefiles i mean besides the established way CMake should accept the generator strings with '_' instead of ' '? If the command line parser could replace '_' by ' ' things would be backward compatible, right? This would solve problems as mentioned above and help people to automate their CMake environments. Thank you, Stefan
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