gn public/sources does not have the intended effect?

[Erik Chen]

I wanted to use gn public/sources to separate between the public interface for a "feature", and the private interface (only used by tests). However, public/sources does not distinguish between test targets and production targets. Thus I end up with the following situation:

// This does not work because the unit test for foo_impl.h cannot depend on foo_impl.h

target (foo) {
public = [ foo.h ]

sources = [foo.cc, foo_impl.h, foo_impl.cc]

}

// This works, but the public/sources distinction is not useful since it's just .h vs .cc files, and including .cc files is already disallowed by style.

target (foo_public) {

  public = [foo.h]

  sources = [foo.cc]

  deps = [:foo_impl]

}
target (foo_impl) {

  public = [foo_impl.h]

  sources = [foo_impl.cc]

}

[Brett Wilson]

Did you see the "friend" tag? You can list other targets that can use your private files which might help with your test.

Brett

[Erik Chen]

Perfect! This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks :)