Help/prop_tgt/LOCATION.rst
Read-only location of a target on disk.
For an imported target, this read-only property returns the value of
the LOCATION_<CONFIG> property for an unspecified configuration
<CONFIG> provided by the target.
For a non-imported target, this property is provided for compatibility
with CMake 2.4 and below. It was meant to get the location of an
executable target's output file for use in :command:add_custom_command. The
path may contain a build-system-specific portion that is replaced at
build time with the configuration getting built (such as
$(ConfigurationName) in VS). In CMake 2.6 and above
:command:add_custom_command automatically recognizes a target name in its
COMMAND and DEPENDS options and computes the target location. In
CMake 2.8.4 and above :command:add_custom_command recognizes
:manual:generator expressions <cmake-generator-expressions(7)>
to refer to target locations anywhere in the command.
Therefore this property is not needed for creating custom commands.
Do not set properties that affect the location of a target after
reading this property. These include properties whose names match
(RUNTIME|LIBRARY|ARCHIVE)_OUTPUT_(NAME|DIRECTORY)(_<CONFIG>)?,
(IMPLIB_)?(PREFIX|SUFFIX), or "LINKER_LANGUAGE". Failure to follow
this rule is not diagnosed and leaves the location of the target
undefined.