How do I add a linker or compile flag in a CMake file?

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Note: Given CMake evolution since this was answer was written in 2012, most of the suggestions here are now outdated/deprecated and have better alternatives.

Suppose you want to add those flags (better to declare them in a constant):

SET(GCC_COVERAGE_COMPILE_FLAGS "-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage")
SET(GCC_COVERAGE_LINK_FLAGS    "-lgcov")

There are several ways to add them:

  1. The easiest one (not clean, but easy and convenient, and works only for compile flags, C & C++ at once):

     add_definitions(${GCC_COVERAGE_COMPILE_FLAGS})

  2. Appending to corresponding CMake variables:

     SET(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS  "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} ${GCC_COVERAGE_COMPILE_FLAGS}")
 SET(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS  "${CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS} ${GCC_COVERAGE_LINK_FLAGS}")

  3. Using target properties, cf. doc CMake compile flag target property and need to know the target name.

     get_target_property(TEMP ${THE_TARGET} COMPILE_FLAGS)
 if(TEMP STREQUAL "TEMP-NOTFOUND")
   SET(TEMP "") # Set to empty string
 else()
   SET(TEMP "${TEMP} ") # A space to cleanly separate from existing content
 endif()
 # Append our values
 SET(TEMP "${TEMP}${GCC_COVERAGE_COMPILE_FLAGS}" )
 set_target_properties(${THE_TARGET} PROPERTIES COMPILE_FLAGS ${TEMP} )

Right now I use method 2.

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