ENABLE_EXPORTS

Specify whether an executable exports symbols for loadable modules.

Normally an executable does not export any symbols because it is the final program. It is possible for an executable to export symbols to be used by loadable modules. When this property is set to true CMake will allow other targets to “link” to the executable with the TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES() command. On all platforms a target-level dependency on the executable is created for targets that link to it. For DLL platforms an import library will be created for the exported symbols and then used for linking. All Windows-based systems including Cygwin are DLL platforms. For non-DLL platforms that require all symbols to be resolved at link time, such as macOS, the module will “link” to the executable using a flag like -bundle_loader. For other non-DLL platforms the link rule is simply ignored since the dynamic loader will automatically bind symbols when the module is loaded.

This property is initialized by the value of the variable CMAKE_ENABLE_EXPORTS if it is set when a target is created.