Turning on linker flags with CMake

Question

When generating VS2010 targets with CMake, I would like the /LTCG flag turned on (only for release + releasewithdebinfo if possible, but its okay if its on for debug builds). How do I modify the linker flags? add_definitions() doesn't work because that only modifies compiler flags. And yes, I have wrapped it in if(MSVC).

How do I modify the linker flags?

Answer 1

You can modify the linker flags in MSC using #pragma comment(linker, ...)

However, if you'd like to do it in the build process with cmake, here are the names you need to know:

• CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS
• CMAKE_SHARED_LINKER_FLAGS
• CMAKE_MODULE_LINKER_FLAGS

(Thanks to Cmake.org).

Answer 2

and STATIC_LIBRARY_FLAGS http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v2.8.8/cmake.html#prop_tgt:STATIC_LIBRARY_FLAGS

for static libraries

Answer 3

For adding linker flags - the following 4 CMake variables:

CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS
CMAKE_MODULE_LINKER_FLAGS
CMAKE_SHARED_LINKER_FLAGS
CMAKE_STATIC_LINKER_FLAGS

can be easily manipulated for different configs (debug, release...) with the ucm_add_linker_flags macro of ucm

linker flags can also be managed on a per-target basis - by using target_link_libraries and passing flags with a - in front of them (but not with a -l - that would be treated as a link library and not a link flag).