Previously if the user configured their build but then changed
LLVM_ENABLED_PROJECT and reconfigured it had no effect on what
projects were actually built. This was very confusing behaviour. The
reason for this is that the value of the LLVM_TOOL_<PROJECT>_BUILD
variables are already set.
The problem here is that we have two sources of truth
- The projects listed in LLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS.
- The projects enabled/disabled with LLVM_TOOL_<PROJECT>_BUILD.
At configure time we have no real way of knowing which source of truth
the user wants so we apply the following heuristic:
If the user ever sets LLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS in the CMakeCache then that
is used as the single source of truth and we force the
LLVM_TOOL_<PROJECT>_BUILD CMake cache variables to have the
appropriate values that match the contents of the
LLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS. If the user never sets LLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS
then they can continue to use and set the LLVM_TOOL_<PROJECT>_BUILD
variables as the "source of truth".
The problem with this approach is that if the user ever tries to use
both LLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS and LLVM_TOOL_<PROJECT>_BUILD for the same
build directory then any user set value for LLVM_TOOL_<PROJECT>_BUILD
variables will get overwriten, likely without the user noticing.
Hopefully the above shouldn't matter in practice because the
LLVM_TOOL_<PROJECT>_BUILD variables are not documented, but
LLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS is.
We should probably deprecate using LLVM_TOOL_<PROJECT>_BUILD
variables at some point.
Thanks for the comment.