COMPILE_DEFINITIONS directory property not propagated to targets?

Usage
1

Hi,

apparently, the COMPILE_DEFINITIONS directory property is not (always) propagated to the targets defined in that directory. Is that on purpose? Do I miss something?

In my situation, there is an add_definitions(-Dsomething) in the toplevel CMakeLists.txt. This is correctly propagated to the COMPILE_DEFINITIONS property of subdirectories: get_directory_property(_defines COMPILE_DEFINITIONS) in a subdirectory yields the expected definition.

However, when asking for get_target_property(_defines ${target} COMPILE_DEFINITIONS) with a ${target} defined in that subdirectory, there is nothing.

Is this again something which can only be addressed via generator expressions?

Kind regards
Ingolf

2

This is expected. The target, at generation time, looks up its COMPILE_DEFINITIONS and its owning directory’s COMPILE_DEFINITIONS and uses the combination. The genex should be able to see this combination, but I’m not 100% sure (in any case, changing it would likely be a policy or need to be a new genex).

3

The genex should be able to see this combination

Apparently, it does. Thanks; works with generator expressions. Slowly but surely, I am getting used to them :wink:.

Kind regards
Ingolf