get_property

Get a property.

get_property(<variable>
             <GLOBAL             |
              DIRECTORY [<dir>]  |
              TARGET    <target> |
              SOURCE    <source> |
                        [<TARGET_DIRECTORY ... | DIRECTORY ...>]   |
              INSTALL   <file>   |
              TEST      <test>   |
              CACHE     <entry>  |
              VARIABLE           >
             PROPERTY <name>
             [SET | DEFINED | BRIEF_DOCS | FULL_DOCS])

Gets one property from one object in a scope.

The first argument specifies the variable in which to store the result. The second argument determines the scope from which to get the property. It must be one of the following:

GLOBAL

Scope is unique and does not accept a name.

DIRECTORY

Scope defaults to the current directory but another directory (already processed by CMake) may be named by the full or relative path <dir>.

TARGET

Scope must name one existing target.

SOURCE

Scope must name one source file.

INSTALL

Scope must name one installed file path.

TEST

Scope must name one existing test.

CACHE

Scope must name one cache entry.

VARIABLE

Scope is unique and does not accept a name.

In the SOURCE case, the queried source file scope can be changed by specifying one of the additional options: DIRECTORY or TARGET_DIRECTORY.

DIRECTORY takes a path to a processed directory, and the source file property will be read from that directory scope.

TARGET_DIRECTORY takes the name of an existing target. The source file property will be read from this target’s directory scope.

The required PROPERTY option is immediately followed by the name of the property to get. If the property is not set an empty value is returned, although some properties support inheriting from a parent scope if defined to behave that way (see define_property()).

If the SET option is given the variable is set to a boolean value indicating whether the property has been set. If the DEFINED option is given the variable is set to a boolean value indicating whether the property has been defined such as with the define_property() command.

If BRIEF_DOCS or FULL_DOCS is given then the variable is set to a string containing documentation for the requested property. If documentation is requested for a property that has not been defined NOTFOUND is returned.