How do I tell cmake I want my project to link libraries statically?

Question

I'm trying to build an OpenCV-based project using CMake, running on Linux. So far my CMakeLists.txt files looks something like

FIND_PACKAGE (OpenCV REQUIRED)
...
TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES (my-executable ${OpenCV_LIBS})

but this results in dynamically linked libraries. How do I link with static libraries?

Answer 1

You build static OpenCV libraries by just setting the BUILD_SHARED_LIBS flag to false in CMake. Then all you need to do to build your own application with those static libraries is to add a dependency on OpenCV in your CMakeLists.txt:

FIND_PACKAGE (OpenCV REQUIRED)
...
TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES (your-application ${OpenCV_LIBS})

and CMake will take care of everything.