Installing headers the modern way, regurgitated and revisited

Code
3

From CMake 3.23 version target_source contain FILE_SET option. Now you can define your headers in one place and automatically use them on an install operation. Even include_directories it’s not any more necessary. This gives more improvements and can be used for modules export, for details read the documentation, install section also.

The above example can be written like this:

target_sources(
  mylib
  PUBLIC
    FILE_SET public-headers
    TYPE HEADERS
    FILES
      myfirstpublicheader.h
      mysecondpublicheader.h
)

install(TARGETS mylib FILE_SET public-headers)
5 Likes