vcpkg wxWidgets CMake linker error with libjpeg.a

Question

I'm trying to use wxWidgets on an arm64 macOS with vcpkg, CMake, and VS Code. Everything is wired up correctly because other vcpkg libraries include, link, and run fine. But, when I try to use wxWidgets there's a linking error.

My CMakeLists.txt:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.22.0)
project(main VERSION 0.1.0)

add_executable(main main.cpp)
set_property(TARGET main PROPERTY CXX_STANDARD 17)

find_package(wxWidgets REQUIRED)
include(${wxWidgets_USE_FILE})
target_include_directories(main PRIVATE ${wxWidgets_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_link_libraries(main PRIVATE ${wxWidgets_LIBRARIES})

The CMake error I get:

[build] [ 50%] Linking CXX executable main
[build] ld: library not found for -llibjpeg.a>
[build] clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)

The value of the wxWidgets_LIBRARIES list (set by find_package(wxWidgets REQUIRED)):

-L/Users/myname/cpp/vcpkg/packages/wxwidgets_arm64-osx/lib;-pthread;/Users/myname/cpp/vcpkg/packages/wxwidgets_arm64-osx/lib/libwx_osx_cocoau_xrc-3.1.a;/Users/myname/cpp/vcpkg/packages/wxwidgets_arm64-osx/lib/libwx_osx_cocoau_qa-3.1.a;/Users/myname/cpp/vcpkg/packages/wxwidgets_arm64-osx/lib/libwx_baseu_net-3.1.a;/Users/myname/cpp/vcpkg/packages/wxwidgets_arm64-osx/lib/libwx_osx_cocoau_html-3.1.a;/Users/myname/cpp/vcpkg/packages/wxwidgets_arm64-osx/lib/libwx_osx_cocoau_core-3.1.a;/Users/myname/cpp/vcpkg/packages/wxwidgets_arm64-osx/lib/libwx_baseu_xml-3.1.a;/Users/myname/cpp/vcpkg/packages/wxwidgets_arm64-osx/lib/libwx_baseu-3.1.a;-lwx_osx_cocoau_core-3.1;libjpeg.a>;libjpeg.a>;libpng.a>;libpng16d.a>;libz.a>;libz.a>;libtiff.a>;libtiffd.a>;liblzma.a>;liblzma.a>;libjpeg.a>;libjpeg.a>;libz.a>;libz.a>;m;-framework AudioToolbox;-framework WebKit;-lwx_baseu-3.1;libexpat.a>;libexpat.a>;libz.a>;libz.a>;-lwxregexu-3.1;libiconv.tbd;-framework CoreFoundation;-framework Security;-framework Carbon;-framework Cocoa;-framework IOKit;-framework QuartzCore;TIFF::TIFF;expat::expat;ZLIB::ZLIB;png_static

I don't have much experience with CMake, so I don't know what the right angle bracket is for, but is that the problem? Could its being the first non-full-path file in the list mean that it doesn't know where to look?

Answer 1

-L is for directories, and -l is for individual library files. I see you have mixed .a files with directories. You'll need to fix that.

Answer 2

Your best bet is to debug cmake configure with --trace-expand and see who is setting wxWidgets_LIBRARIES to a incomplete and very strange generator expression libjpeg.a>;libjpeg.a>;libpng.a>;libpng16d.a>;

Another suspicious thing is that your library paths contain packages/wxwidgets_arm64-osx which indicates either wrong usage of vcpkg or there is a -config.cmake involved which was not fixed by vcpkg. (everything vcpkg finds via cmake should be living in /installed/<triplet>)