Why does add_dependencies add a third party lib into my executable project?

Question

I have the following CMake projects:

testexe: which depends on shared library testlib

testlib: shared library which uses a third party DLL, say test3rd.lib

After generating the solution, I found that everything was fine except testexe requires test3rd.lib as well as testlib, but my test should only depend on testlib.

What is the reason for this extra dependency?

Answer 1

You could link test3rd.lib as a PRIVATE dependency of testlib, PUBLIC is default.

target_link_libraries(testlib PRIVATE test3rd.lib)

Reference

• http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.0/command/target_link_libraries.html