How to properly add include directories with CMake

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Two things must be done.

First add the directory to be included:

target_include_directories(test PRIVATE ${YOUR_DIRECTORY})

In case you are stuck with a very old CMake version (2.8.10 or older) without support for target_include_directories, you can also use the legacy include_directories instead:

include_directories(${YOUR_DIRECTORY})

Then you also must add the header files to the list of your source files for the current target, for instance:

set(SOURCES file.cpp file2.cpp ${YOUR_DIRECTORY}/file1.h ${YOUR_DIRECTORY}/file2.h)
add_executable(test ${SOURCES})

This way, the header files will appear as dependencies in the Makefile, and also for example in the generated Visual Studio project, if you generate one.

How to use those header files for several targets:

set(HEADER_FILES ${YOUR_DIRECTORY}/file1.h ${YOUR_DIRECTORY}/file2.h)

add_library(mylib libsrc.cpp ${HEADER_FILES})
target_include_directories(mylib PRIVATE ${YOUR_DIRECTORY})
add_executable(myexec execfile.cpp ${HEADER_FILES})
target_include_directories(myexec PRIVATE ${YOUR_DIRECTORY})

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