link library to all targets in cmake project

Question

Let me describe what I think is a sufficiently common use case, that it should be supported. Consider a project which consists of a library and a set of executable that use that library. A straightforward approach is to add_library, followed by a sequence of add_executable() target_link_lib() pairs.

This is a lot of boilerplate coding. It would be nice to able to do something like set(PROJECT_LINK_LIBS, lib1 ...), and have cmake remove the extra boilerplate.

Thinking on this more, I realize I would like a link_libraries function that behaves similarly to include_directories. I would argue that this:

1. Would be useful in a lot of cases.
2. Would lead to dryer CMakeLists.
3. Would encourage better code organizations -- there would be a natural incentive to organize the folders, code, and executables in such a way that all executables have the same dependancies -- certainly a clean practice.

Is there anything like this?

Answer 1

As mentioned at https://stackoverflow.com/a/50295894/129550 the requested link_libraries(example example2) function is actually now a part of cmake.

Answer 2

This answer might be obsolete:
Check the new set of variables CMAKE_<LANG>_STANDARD_LIBRARIES

Original Answer: It appears that now a CMAKE_STANDARD_LIBRARIES variable exists, where you can append the libraries according to your need. However, this variable seemingly expect full path to the libraries.

See here.