This means for example, that consumers can use: target_link_libraries(foo ${QT_QTGUI_LIBRARIES}) instead of also needing to specify all 'public' dependencies: target_link_libraries(foo ${QT_QTGUI_LIBRARIES} ${QT_QTCORE_LIBRARIES} ) when using the IMPORTED targets. Also populate the IMPORTED_LINK_DEPENDENT_LIBRARIES property so CMake can help the linker find shared library dependencies.