Copy target file to another location in a post build step in CMake

Question

I have a dynamic library that gets a different name depending on configuration, specified in the CMake scripts by:

set_target_properties(${name} PROPERTIES O         


        

Answer 1

Rather than using the obsolete LOCATION property, prefer using generator expressions:

add_custom_command(TARGET mylibrary POST_BUILD
    COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy $ ${targetfile}
)

You could also just generate the exe in the target directory directly by setting the target property RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY instead of copying it. This has per-configuration options (e.g. RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_DEBUG).

set_target_properties(mylibrary PROPERTIES
                      RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_DEBUG 
                      RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_RELEASE 
)

For further details run:

cmake --help-property "RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY"
cmake --help-property "RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_"

Also, you should be able to use forward slashes throughout for path separators, even on Windows.