command line - CMake's execute_process and arbitrary shell scripts

Question

CMake's execute_process command seems to only let you, well, execute a process - not an arbitrary line you could feed a command shell. The thing is, I want to use pipes, file descriptor redirection, etc. - and that does not seem to be possible. The alternative would be very painful for me (I think)...

What should I do?

PS - CMake 2.8 and 3.x answer(s) are interesting.

Answer 1

You can execute any shell script, using your shell's support for taking in a script within a string argument.

Example:

execute_process(
    COMMAND bash "-c" "echo -n hello | sed 's/hello/world/;'" 
    OUTPUT_VARIABLE FOO
)

will result in FOO containing world.

Of course, you would need to escape quotes and backslashes with care. Also remember that running bash would only work on platforms which have bash - i.e. it won't work on Windows.