What is the proper way to use `pkg-config` from `cmake`?

First of, the call:

include(FindPkgConfig)

should be replaced with:

find_package(PkgConfig)

The find_package() call is more flexible and allows options such as REQUIRED, that do things automatically that one would have to do manually with include().

Secondly, manually calling pkg-config should be avoid when possible. CMake comes with a rich set of package definitions, found in Linux under /usr/share/cmake-3.0/Modules/Find*cmake. These provide more options and choice for the user than a raw call to pkg_search_module().

As for the mentioned hypothetical target_use() command, CMake already has that built-in in a way with PUBLIC|PRIVATE|INTERFACE. A call like target_include_directories(mytarget PUBLIC ...) will cause the include directories to be automatically used in every target that uses mytarget, e.g. target_link_libraries(myapp mytarget). However this mechanism seems to be only for libraries created within the CMakeLists.txt file and does not work for libraries acquired with pkg_search_module(). The call add_library(bar SHARED IMPORTED) might be used for that, but I haven't yet looked into that.

As for the main question, this here works in most cases:

find_package(PkgConfig REQUIRED)
pkg_check_modules(SDL2 REQUIRED sdl2)
...
target_link_libraries(testapp ${SDL2_LIBRARIES})
target_include_directories(testapp PUBLIC ${SDL2_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_compile_options(testapp PUBLIC ${SDL2_CFLAGS_OTHER})

The SDL2_CFLAGS_OTHER contains defines and other flags necessary for a successful compile. The flags SDL2_LIBRARY_DIRS and SDL2_LDFLAGS_OTHER are however still ignored, no idea how often that would become a problem.

More documentation here http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.0/module/FindPkgConfig.html

If you're using cmake and pkg-config in a pretty normal way, this solution works.

If, however, you have a library that exists in some development directory (such as /home/me/hack/lib), then using other methods seen here fail to configure the linker paths. Libraries that are not found under the typical install locations would result in linker errors, like /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lmy-hacking-library-1.0. This solution fixes the linker error for that case.

Another issue could be that the pkg-config files are not installed in the normal place, and the pkg-config paths for the project need to be added using the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable while cmake is running (see other Stack Overflow questions regarding this). This solution also works well when you use the correct pkg-config path.

Using IMPORTED_TARGET is key to solving the issues above. This solution is an improvement on this earlier answer and boils down to this final version of a working CMakeLists.txt:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.14)
project(ya-project C)

# the `pkg_check_modules` function is created with this call
find_package(PkgConfig REQUIRED) 

# these calls create special `PkgConfig::<MODULE>` variables
pkg_check_modules(MY_PKG REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET any-package)
pkg_check_modules(YOUR_PKG REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET ya-package)

add_executable(program-name file.c ya.c)

target_link_libraries(program-name PUBLIC
        PkgConfig::MY_PKG
        PkgConfig::YOUR_PKG)

Note that target_link_libraries does more than change the linker commands. It also propagates other PUBLIC properties of specified targets like compiler flags, compiler defines, include paths, etc., so, use the PUBLIC keyword with caution.