[SOLVED] Getting the filenames of the files Cmake add_library() generates

Issue

Using CMake 3.23, I am trying to get the names of the files that add_library() generates for a target in Windows.

add_library(talib source.cpp source.h)

It generates the following files:

talib.dll
talib.lib
talib.pdb

Is there any way to get the names of the above files? $<TARGET_FILE:talib> only gives me talib.dll, how can I get the rest of the filenames, and will it work for Linux libraries?

Solution

There are the following generator expressions. This is mostly quoting the documentation here:

https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake-generator-expressions.7.html

• $<TARGET_FILE:tgt> -- Full path to the tgt binary file. For shared libraries, this is the dynamic object file on all platforms.
• $<TARGET_LINKER_FILE:tgt> -- File used when linking to the tgt target. This will usually be the same as $<TARGET_FILE:tgt>, but for a shared library on DLL platforms, it would be the .lib import library associated with the DLL.
• $<TARGET_PDB_FILE:tgt> -- Full path to the linker generated program database file (.pdb) where tgt is the name of a target.

All of these resolve to absolute paths. The first two work on all systems (but might duplicate each other). The last one only works on PDB systems and will throw a fatal error that reads TARGET_PDB_FILE is not supported by the target linker. on other systems.

To detect whether you are on a PDB system, you can check the variable CMAKE_<LANG>_LINKER_SUPPORTS_PDB, where <LANG> is C, CXX, etc.

Answered By - Alex Reinking

Answer Checked By - Mildred Charles (WPSolving Admin)