For CMake's “install”, what does the CONFIGURATIONS argument do?

Question

I don't know what the CONFIGURATIONS argument of CMake's install command does. When I use CONFIGURATIONS with debug or release in installing files, no file gets installed. What happened?

Can someone explain it in more detail. It will be best if you give me some examples.

P.S. This is not the same as: For CMake's "install" command, what can the COMPONENT argument do?

Answer 1

From the docs:

The CONFIGURATIONS argument specifies a list of build configurations for which the install rule applies (Debug, Release, etc.).

So for example, consider the following CMakeListst.txt:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8 FATAL_ERROR)
project(Test)
add_executable(MyTest main.cc)
install(TARGETS MyTest DESTINATION bin CONFIGURATIONS Release)

This means that

cmake --build . --target install --config Release

will place the executable MyTest (or MyTest.exe) in ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/bin, and

cmake --build . --target install --config Debug

won't install anything.