Platform/Generator specific properties in a condition

Code
1

Often I see cmake code like this:

if(APPLE)
    set(CMAKE_XCODE_GENERATE_SCHEME TRUE)
else()
    set_property(DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} PROPERTY VS_STARTUP_PROJECTlab)
endif()

Is it really necessary to do the if…else clause? Isn’t it clear already by the name of the property that it belongs to XCODE or VS? I would rather write:

set(CMAKE_XCODE_GENERATE_SCHEME TRUE)
set_property(DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} PROPERTY VS_STARTUP_PROJECTlab)

Does it have any impact to leave out the if…else clause? What’s the best practice for code like this?

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2

Yeah, the properties are only “active” when the generator looks at them, so you can make these unconditional since the other generators will just ignore them.

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