[CMake] Should I create IMPORTED targets for executables?

[Stephen Kelly]

Stephen Kelly wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> For Qt 5 I'm creating IMPORTED targets for all the libraries, which has
> several benefits.
> 
> I'm not sure if there are any benefits to creating IMPORTED targets for
> the executables too? Currently I just create variables with the full paths
> to the executables (moc, uic, rcc) instead.
> 
> Is there any reason to change those to IMPORTED executables?

Hi,

Just for informations sake, I've submitted a patch to create imported 
targets in the Qt 5 CMake files.

https://codereview.qt-project.org/#change,31245

The justification is that it is future-proof in terms of future CMake 
features, and also in case we ever need to add properties with a target 
scope to executables. The alternative to that would otherwise be something 
like set(QT_UIC_EXECUTABLE_FOO "Bar"), which wouldn't have the same scope as 
the TARGET. I also don't want to end up with the situation we have with 
FindQt4.cmake where we need to define QT_USE_IMPORTED_TARGETS before finding 
the package because of backwards compatibility.

Thanks,

Steve.