Consume and export Common Package Specification

[ZedThree]

Description

https://cps-org.github.io/cps/

The Common Package Specification (CPS) is a mechanism for describing the useful artifacts of a software package. A CPS file provides a declarative description of a package that is intended to be consumed by other packages that build against that package. By providing a detailed, flexible, and language-agnostic description using widely supported JSON grammar, CPS aims to make it easy to portably consume packages, regardless of build systems used.

Exporting CPS files would make it easier for other projects to link against libraries built with fpm, while consuming CPS files would allow fpm to link against (already built and/or installed) libraries built with other tools.

Possible Solution

No response

Additional Information

No response

[ivan-pi]

Are you aware of any packages which already use this mechanism? I know that CMake 4.0 was recently released. Is CPS part of it?

I think I've mentioned CPS on Discourse or fpm issues/discussions before but I failed to find the thread.

Edit: yes, it looks like this is now part of CMake 4.0: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v4.0/command/find_package.html#cps

[ZedThree]

No, but I think it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation -- nobody's likely to start using it until there's good support. Getting support into fpm will be good motivation for people to start using it