LINK_INTERFACE_LIBRARIES

List public interface libraries for a shared library or executable.

By default linking to a shared library target transitively links to targets with which the library itself was linked. For an executable with exports (see the ENABLE_EXPORTS target property) no default transitive link dependencies are used. This property replaces the default transitive link dependencies with an explicit list. 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. If the list is empty then no transitive link dependencies will be incorporated when this target is linked into another target even if the default set is non-empty. This property is initialized by the value of the CMAKE_LINK_INTERFACE_LIBRARIES variable if it is set when a target is created. This property is ignored for STATIC libraries.

This property is overridden by the INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES property if policy CMP0022 is NEW.

This property is deprecated. Use INTERFACE_LINK_LIBRARIES instead.

Note that it is not advisable to populate the LINK_INTERFACE_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.