Cannot build against pip installed root

[will-cern]

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Description

When I tried to build a cmake project against the pip install of root (by setting the CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH to the path in the dist-packages folder), I get errors:

CMake Error at /usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages/ROOT/cmake/ROOTConfig-targets.cmake:930 (message):
  The imported target "ROOT::Core" references the file

     "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/mock_site_packages/ROOT/lib/libCore.so"

  but this file does not exist.  Possible reasons include:

  * The file was deleted, renamed, or moved to another location.

  * An install or uninstall procedure did not complete successfully.

  * The installation package was faulty and contained

     "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages/ROOT/cmake/ROOTConfig-targets.cmake"

  but not all the files it references.

This issue is just to make sure that pip installations of ROOT will be buildable against!
Thanks
Will

Reproducer

pip install root
export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages/ROOT
...

then do a cmake build

ROOT version

latsest

Installation method

pip install

Operating system

linux

Additional context

No response

[guitargeek]

Thanks for reporting this! I'm new about that problem and plan to fix this as a side effect of my big campaign to improve the bookkeeping of the ROOT install sub-directories.

[vepadulano]

Hi @will-cern ,

Thanks for reporting! We are looking at the same problem for a different project, this is known, there might be in the soon future some recipe on how to do this. Remember that the PyPI distribution is in alpha stage and there is no planned support for building CMake-based projects that depend on ROOT through its PyPI distribution.