# message

Display a message to the user.

    message([<mode>] "message to display" ...)

The optional `<mode>` keyword determines the type of message:

`FATAL_ERROR`
  CMake Error, stop processing and generation.
`SEND_ERROR`
  CMake Error, continue processing, but skip generation.
`WARNING`
  CMake Warning, continue processing.
`AUTHOR_WARNING`
  CMake Warning (dev), continue processing.
`DEPRECATION`
  CMake Deprecation Error or Warning if variable `CMAKE_ERROR_DEPRECATED` or `CMAKE_WARN_DEPRECATED` is enabled, respectively, else no message.
(none) or `NOTICE`
  Important message printed to stderr to attract user’s attention.
`STATUS`
  The main interesting messages that project users might be interested in. Ideally these should be concise, no more than a single line, but still informative.
`VERBOSE`
  Detailed informational messages intended for project users. These messages should provide additional details that won’t be of interest in most cases, but which may be useful to those building the project when they want deeper insight into what’s happening.
`DEBUG`
  Detailed informational messages intended for developers working on the project itself as opposed to users who just want to build it. These messages will not typically be of interest to other users building the project and will often be closely related to internal implementation details.
`TRACE`
  Fine-grained messages with very low-level implementation details. Messages using this log level would normally only be temporary and would expect to be removed before releasing the project, packaging up the files, etc.

The CMake command-line tool displays `STATUS` to `TRACE` messages on stdout with the message preceded by two hyphens and a space. All other message types are sent to stderr and are not prefixed with hyphens. The `CMake GUI` displays all messages in its log area. The `curses interface` shows `STATUS` to `TRACE` messages one at a time on a status line and other messages in an interactive pop-up box. The `--log-level` command-line option to each of these tools can be used to control which messages will be shown.

Messages of log levels `NOTICE` and below will also have each line preceded by the content of the `CMAKE_MESSAGE_INDENT` variable (converted to a single string by concatenating its list items). For `STATUS` to `TRACE` messages, this indenting content will be inserted after the hyphens.

CMake Warning and Error message text displays using a simple markup language. Non-indented text is formatted in line-wrapped paragraphs delimited by newlines. Indented text is considered pre-formatted.