How to have CMake show headers-that are not part of any binary target-in the IDE?

Several months down the line, I did not find a way to directly list the header files for an INTERFACE library.

Since the question still has some views, here is what I ended up doing (i.e. what appears like the lesser hack currently available).

Imagine module A is a header only library. In the CMakeLists.txt declaring its target:

# Define 'modA_headers' variable to list all the header filesset(modA_headers   utility.h  moreUtilities.h  ...)add_library(moduleA INTERFACE) # 'moduleA' is an INTERFACE pseudo target## From here, the target 'moduleA' can be customised#target_include_directories(moduleA ...) # Transitively forwardedinstall(TARGETS moduleA ...)##  HACK: have the files showing in the IDE, under the name 'moduleA_ide'#add_custom_target(moduleA_ide SOURCES ${modA_headers})

I do not accept this answer, since I expect further releases of CMake to offer a more semantically correct approach, which will then be accepted : )

You can use the new target_sources command in CMake 3.1.

add_library(moduleA INTERFACE)target_include_directories(moduleA INTERFACE ...)target_sources(moduleA INTERFACE   ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/utility.h  ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/moreUtilities.h)

It is also transitive.

http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.1/command/target_sources.html#command:target_sources

The limitation of not being able to export targets which have INTERFACE_SOURCES has been lifted for CMake 3.3.