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debuggingcmakeinclude-path

How can I list the PRIVATE, PUBLIC and INTERFACE include directories of a target?

This question:

Listing include_directories in CMake

teaches us how to list include directories for a CMake directory. How do we do that for a target, and separating the PUBLIC, PRIVATE and INTERFACE directories?

Solution

  • Well, the same getter works for directories and targets, just with slightly different syntax:

    get_property(dirs1 TARGET my_target PROPERTY INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES)

    Now, this will get us the union of two sets of include directories: PUBLIC and PRIVATE, but not INTERFACE. We also get:

    get_property(dirs2 TARGET my_target PROPERTY INTERFACE_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES)

    Now:

    • The PUBLIC directories are dirs1 intersection-with dirs2 (dirs1 ∩ dirs2).
    • The PRIVATE directories are dirs1 set-minus dirs2 (dirs1 ∖ dirs2).
    • The INTERFACE directories are dirs2 set-minus dirs1 (dirs2 ∖ dirs1).

    As described in the question you linked to, once you have your list of directories, you can print it out like so:

    foreach(dir ${dirs2})
  message(STATUS "Interface include directory for my_target: ${dir}")
endforeach()

    If you need to actually, concretely, generate the three lists - see this question about how to perform union, intersection and difference.