How to set executable to Win32 in release mode-CodePudding

I've read on CMake's documentation that when calling add_executable, you can set the executable type to be Win32 by doing add_executable(target WIN32 source.cpp). I also know that you should use CMake generator expressions to check for build configurations like so:

target_compile_definitions(target PUBLIC
  $<$<CONFIG:Debug>:DEBUG>
  $<$<CONFIG:Release>:RELEASE>
)

However this won't work with add_executable. It treats it as a source file when I do add_executable(target $<$<CONFIG:Release>:WIN32> source.cpp) and so it fails. What is the correct way of doing setting the executable type to WIN32 only in release mode?

CodePudding user response：

I am not really sure it makes sense given a WIN32 executable and a non-WIN32 executable do not have the same entry point, so the code would need to change as well.

Still, here is how you would do it on CMake side:

add_executable(target source.cpp)
set_target_properties(target PROPERTIES WIN32_EXECUTABLE $<CONFIG:Release>)

Key point is the WIN32 flag in add_executable is just a shortcut to set the WIN32_EXECUTABLE property.

Note: I cannot test this sample atm so it depends on me having read those links properly ;)