gcc - CMake: use a custom linker

Question

I want to setup a custom toolchain with cmake. I've set the compiler but I don't know how to set the linker. This error is reported because cmake try to use the compiler to link:

The C compiler "xgcc.exe" is not able to compile a simple test program.

Here there is a snippet of my toolchain file

# specify the cross compiler
INCLUDE(CMakeForceCompiler)
SET(CMAKE_C_COMPILER   xgcc.exe)
SET(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER xgcc.exe)
#CMAKE_FORCE_C_COMPILER(xgcc.exe GNU)
#CMAKE_FORCE_CXX_COMPILER(xgcc.exe GNU)

I've tried to force the compiler but the linker problem will not be solved.

Answer 1

The link command line is set in Modules/CMake{C,CXX,Fortran}Information.cmake and defaults to using the compiler, not CMAKE_LINKER (see source code). This can be changed by replacing the rule that builds the link command line, which lives in variables CMAKE_CXX_LINK_EXECUTABLE (and friends). NB that variable does not indicate the path to the linker executable; it says how to link an executable!

One approach is to set that rule to use the linker, e.g.

cmake -DCMAKE_LINKER=/path/to/linker -DCMAKE_CXX_LINK_EXECUTABLE="<CMAKE_LINKER> <FLAGS> <CMAKE_CXX_LINK_FLAGS> <LINK_FLAGS> <OBJECTS> -o <TARGET> <LINK_LIBRARIES>"

See also this post from CMake mailing list and this one - this also makes a natural place to prepend a linker modifier to another linker.