[Question] Accessing executable build location outside of `ecbuild`

[StegmannJCSDA]

I am working on updating a legacy project that will use ecbuild to build multiple executables in the following way:

ecbuild_add_executable( TARGET app
                        SOURCES ${app_src_files}
                        LIBS crtm )

In the past this was done with local makefiles that built the executables in their source directory. I would like to be able to create a (likely Python) script that links all the generated executables into a case directory, together with some case-specific input data.

To this end, the Python script would need to know the path of the executables built with ecbuild.

Is there an elegant way to do this?

[wdeconinck]

This is really independent of ecbuild, but rather a general CMake question.

The older CMake way was to get the LOCATION property from a target via

get_target_property(<var> <target> LOCATION)

but that has been deprecated for non-imported targets, see Policy 0026. The recommendation is to use the $<TARGET_FILE:executable> generator expression in combination with file(generate).

[StegmannJCSDA]

This is really independent of ecbuild, but rather a general CMake question.

Yes, indeed.

Thank you, I will have a closer look at the documentation. Something like this will probably work:

file(GENERATE OUTPUT location_file CONTENT "$<TARGET_FILE:executable>")