CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cmake
Max
Max

Reputation: 97

Cmake: Override subdirectory link mode to LINK_PRIVATE

I have a pretty big 3rd party cmake directory as a part of my project that some of my projects depend on. I import this directory into my dependent projects using add_subdirectory(). Unfortunately, this also imports the libraries that the 3rd party project links to into my projects.

I was able to manually fix this by specifying LINK_PRIVATE in the cmakelists.txt file of the 3rd party directory for the target_link_libraries() command. I would much prefer to do it remotely from within cmakelists using set_property or similar.

Is this possible?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 257

Answers (1)

ComicSansMS
ComicSansMS

Reputation: 54589

In general, when using add_subdirectory such effects are hard to contain. Apart from the build targets, you may also get similar pollution effects on global and cache variables, tests and other places, which is why I would not recommend this approach for third library dependencies.

A cleaner approach is provided by the ExternalProject module. This gives you a command ExternalProject_Add that can be used to configure and build a third party library with CMake (or other build systems). The advantage here is that the library's CMake run is completely independent of your own, so there are no pollution effects. The disadvantage is that no targets from that library get imported automatically into your own project, so you might need some additional glue code to get them back in. Still, overall this should be a much cleaner approach.

Upvotes: 1

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