How do I add a library path in cmake?

Question

I have 2 folders "inc" and "lib" in my project which have headers and static libs respectively. How do I tell cmake to use those 2 directories for include and linking respectively?

Answer 1

The simplest way of doing this would be to add

include_directories(${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/inc) link_directories(${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/lib)  add_executable(foo ${FOO_SRCS}) target_link_libraries(foo bar) # libbar.so is found in ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/lib 

The modern CMake version that doesn't add the -I and -L flags to every compiler invocation would be to use imported libraries:

add_library(bar SHARED IMPORTED) # or STATIC instead of SHARED set_target_properties(bar PROPERTIES   IMPORTED_LOCATION "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/lib/libbar.so"   INTERFACE_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/include/libbar" )  set(FOO_SRCS "foo.cpp") add_executable(foo ${FOO_SRCS}) target_link_libraries(foo bar) # also adds the required include path 

If setting the INTERFACE_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES doesn't add the path, older versions of CMake also allow you to use target_include_directories(bar PUBLIC /path/to/include). However, this no longer works with CMake 3.6 or newer.

Answer 2

might fail working with link_directories, then add each static library like following:

target_link_libraries(foo /path_to_static_library/libbar.a)