What if I really do want a package to install an EXE?

[dennisferron]

I'm working on a project and vcpkg port for that project. I got the following message.

warning: The following EXEs were found in /bin or /debug/bin. EXEs are not valid distribution targets.

C:\source\vcpkg\packages\antlr4-testrig-runner_x64-mingw-static\debug\bin\antlr4-testrig-runner.exe

warning: There should be no bin\ directory in a static build, but C:\source\vcpkg\packages\antlr4-testrig-runner_x64-mingw-static\bin is present.

The thing is, the point of my project is actually to do the very thing vcpkg is warning about. What I'm trying to accomplish is make available a CMake function, similar to "antlr4_generate()" from the antlr4 vcpkg port, but that when you run it adds a target that runs the antlr4 TestRig tool (in Java).

(I just realized a nuance here is that, while ultimately I will have it work the way I just described, in the meantime while developing the project I have it directly building the test rig executable during build of the package - without waiting for the user CMakeLists.txt to call a function to do so. That could be salient here; I'm not sure.)

In order to make the ANTLR4 TestRig runnable from the Run/Debug menu of an IDE like CLion (as opposed to launching the ANTLR4 TestRig from CMake during configuration or build steps), there has to be a C++ executable associated with it somehow. I wrote a C++ main that just launches a Java process that runs the TestRig class from the ANTLR4 .jar file.

Obviously I could get around the vcpkg problem by just providing this in the form of a library and making the user incorporate it into their own executable (and I'm still not sure yet if I can get an add_executable performed inside a package to show up as a top level Run/Debug target in CLion IDE), but I was wondering if there's a work around or if providing EXE's in vcpkg is just a nonstarter?

For instance maybe I could/should install the executable to a different location than .../bin; perhaps .../test?

[dg0yt]

Ports can have executables. Many ports do. However, they are not allowed to stay in /bin. The right destination is /tools/<PORT>.

For CMake-based ports, this is generally resolved by calling vcpkg_copy_tools(TOOL_NAMES ... AUTO_CLEAN) after vcpkg_cmake_install. This function also takes care of app-local deployment of DLLs.
https://learn.microsoft.com/vcpkg/maintainers/functions/vcpkg_copy_tools