INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES

List public interface libraries for a library.

This property contains the list of transitive link dependencies. When the target is linked into another target using the target_link_libraries() command, the libraries listed (and recursively their link interface libraries) will be provided to the other target also. This property is overridden by the LINK_INTERFACE_LIBRARIES or LINK_INTERFACE_LIBRARIES_<CONFIG> property if policy CMP0022 is OLD or unset.

Contents of INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES may use “generator expressions” with the syntax $<...>. See the cmake-generator-expressions(7) manual for available expressions. See the cmake-buildsystem(7) manual for more on defining buildsystem properties.

Note that it is not advisable to populate the INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES of a target with paths for dependencies. That would hard-code into installed packages the include directory paths for dependencies as found on the machine the package was made on.

That is, code like this is incorrect for targets which will be used to generate cmake-packages(7):

target_link_libraries(mylib INTERFACE
  ${Boost_LIBRARIES};${OtherDep_LIBRARIES}
)

Dependencies must provide their own IMPORTED targets which have their own IMPORTED_LOCATION populated appropriately. That way, when a consumer uses the installed package, the consumer will run the appropriate find_package() command to find the dependencies on their own machine and populate the IMPORTED targets with appropriate paths. See Creating Packages for more. Note that many modules currently shipped with CMake do not currently provide IMPORTED targets.