CMake add_executable in another directory

Question

I am making a bunch of tests in order to verify that each library are correctly linked, and then some tests for the functionalities of my code.

I would like to have X different executable in the directory project/build/tests and I want my program to be build in project/build

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0)
project(ProjectName)
# Linking library ...
add_executable(${PROJECT_NAME} ${SRC_LIST} ${INCLUDE_LIST})

until here, everything is fine and works as wanted but then I don't know how to tell cmake to create my tests in another directory as this does not work

add_executable(tests/OpenMP_Check tests/openmp.cpp)

my project has this architecture :

project :

• src
• include
• lib
• build
• • tests
• tests

To put it in a nutshell : How do I ask CMake to create my tests in another directory ?

Answer 1

Use set_target_properties on your test executable to set its RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY to just ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}.

Answer 2

Thanks to arrowd I managed to do it with these lines

add_executable(OpenMP_Check tests/openmp.cpp)
set_target_properties(OpenMP_Check PROPERTIES RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY "${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/tests")

After looking for the way to use "set_target_properties" (and the doc of CMake is honestly unreadable) I found this thread, which makes this question a duplicate. how do I make cmake output into a 'bin' dir?