CMake FIND_PACKAGE succeeds but returns wrong path

The problem is with the boost-devel distributed file: /usr/lib64/boost/Boost-relwithdebinfo.cmake

The cmake-2.6 package does not use this file at all, because the FindBoost.cmake file returns (correct) full-paths to boost libraries. The cmake28-2.8.8 FindBoost.cmake file returns library strings like "boost_date_time-mt-shared", which are targets defined in /usr/lib64/boost/Boost-relwithdebinfo.cmake.

At the very top of /usr/lib64/boost/Boost-relwithdebinfo.cmake, a variable named _IMPORT_PREFIX is defined from the location of the cmake file itself, and then used like so:

#----------------------------------------------------------------
# Generated CMake target import file for configuration "RelWithDebInfo".
#----------------------------------------------------------------

# Commands may need to know the format version.
SET(CMAKE_IMPORT_FILE_VERSION 1)

# Compute the installation prefix relative to this file.
GET_FILENAME_COMPONENT(_IMPORT_PREFIX "${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_FILE}" PATH)
GET_FILENAME_COMPONENT(_IMPORT_PREFIX "${_IMPORT_PREFIX}" PATH)

# Import target "boost_date_time-static" for configuration "RelWithDebInfo"
SET_PROPERTY(TARGET boost_date_time-static APPEND PROPERTY IMPORTED_CONFIGURATIONS RELWITHDEBINFO)
SET_TARGET_PROPERTIES(boost_date_time-static PROPERTIES
  IMPORTED_LOCATION_RELWITHDEBINFO "${_IMPORT_PREFIX}/lib64/libboost_date_time.a"
  )

This sets _IMPORT_PREFIX to "/usr/lib64", which is concatenated with another string that has /lib64/ in it as well. I found that if I simply change the file to include a 3rd GET_FILENAME_COMPONENT call, it works fine. Like so:

#----------------------------------------------------------------
# Generated CMake target import file for configuration "RelWithDebInfo".
#----------------------------------------------------------------

# Commands may need to know the format version.
SET(CMAKE_IMPORT_FILE_VERSION 1)

# Compute the installation prefix relative to this file.
GET_FILENAME_COMPONENT(_IMPORT_PREFIX "${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_FILE}" PATH)
GET_FILENAME_COMPONENT(_IMPORT_PREFIX "${_IMPORT_PREFIX}" PATH)
GET_FILENAME_COMPONENT(_IMPORT_PREFIX "${_IMPORT_PREFIX}" PATH)

# Import target "boost_date_time-static" for configuration "RelWithDebInfo"
SET_PROPERTY(TARGET boost_date_time-static APPEND PROPERTY IMPORTED_CONFIGURATIONS RELWITHDEBINFO)
SET_TARGET_PROPERTIES(boost_date_time-static PROPERTIES
  IMPORTED_LOCATION_RELWITHDEBINFO "${_IMPORT_PREFIX}/lib64/libboost_date_time.a"
  )

This seems to be an issue with CMake 2.8.6 on CentOS. When doing the same with 2.6.4 or 2.8.3 it works correctly. Also with 2.8.7 on OS X it also works correctly.

This problem occurs when using some older versions of boost with cmake-2.8.6-rc2 or later, where the boost package finding code was changed.

The problem can be worked around by specifying -DBoost_NO_BOOST_CMAKE=ON on the cmake command line.

The actual commit where this problem is introduced is 7da796d1fdd7cca07df733d010cd343f6f8787a9, and can be viewed here.