CMAKE - Changing outdir macro through cmake - directory

Question

Reading others questions here I found that is possible to change the outdir macro inside de visual studio. I really searched but didn't found/understand how to do it.
It's kind simple. I just want to change the Project property -> Configuration Properties -> General -> Output Directory. Because I know that will change the outdir macro.
I understand that is throught set_target_property using some kind of cmake PROPERTY but I really didn't found how.

Answer 1

It's pretty straightforward as you suspected. You need to look at the ARCHIVE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY, LIBRARY_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY, and RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY target properties to modify the outdir path.
These all have config-specific variants too (e.g. ARCHIVE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_DEBUG) and can all be initialised by the global CMake variables of the same name with a CMAKE_ prepended.
So, you can do e.g.
set_target_properties(MyExe PROPERTIES RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY <custom path>)
or, to affect all targets,
set(CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY <custom path>)
NB. From the docs:
Multi-configuration generators (VS, Xcode) append a per-configuration subdirectory to the specified directory.
Here's an example showing this behaviour. It writes its own trivial C++ source files, so all you should need to do is copy this to a folder, invoke CMake then try building the resultant solution in Debug, Release, MinSizeRel and RelWithDebInfo. Tested with VS2012. The executable always ends up in <build dir>/Exes/Debug regardless of build type, and similarly the library is always in <build dir>/Libs/Debug.
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.11 FATAL_ERROR)
project(Example)
file(WRITE lib.hpp "void Print();\n")
file(WRITE lib.cpp "#include<iostream>\nvoid Print() { std::cout << \"Hello World\\n\"; }\n")
file(WRITE main.cpp "#include \"lib.hpp\"\nint main() { Print(); return 0; }\n")
set(ArchiveOutputDir ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/Libs/Debug)
set(CMAKE_ARCHIVE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_DEBUG ${ArchiveOutputDir})
set(CMAKE_ARCHIVE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_MINSIZEREL ${ArchiveOutputDir})
set(CMAKE_ARCHIVE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_RELEASE ${ArchiveOutputDir})
set(CMAKE_ARCHIVE_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_RELWITHDEBINFO ${ArchiveOutputDir})
set(RuntimeOutputDir ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/Exes/Debug)
set(CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_DEBUG ${RuntimeOutputDir})
set(CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_MINSIZEREL ${RuntimeOutputDir})
set(CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_RELEASE ${RuntimeOutputDir})
set(CMAKE_RUNTIME_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY_RELWITHDEBINFO ${RuntimeOutputDir})
add_library(MyLib lib.cpp lib.hpp)
add_executable(MyExe main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(MyExe MyLib)

Answer 2

In the end, what worked for me was placing the full path on the target_link_libraries with debug prefix and optimized prefix to point release config and relwithdebinfo config to release path and debug to debug. I also took off the link_directories... I don't if I didn't understand but it worked for me!