[CMake] link_libraries() deprecated. Why?

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Thursday 02 April 2009, Brad King wrote:
> Alex,
>
> Looking at history I see this was deprecated by a patch you sent me.
> Originally we called the command 'discouraged'.  Why did we change
> to 'deprecated'?

I don't remember why we changed the wording.
The "deprecated" commands are commands which are in general not recommended 
anymore for use, but they are still available.
I.e. as a replacement for LINK_LIBRARIES() there is now 
TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES() (since a long time already), which has advantages, 
and is in general recommended to be used instead, see below.

...
> > I don't like to use deprecated features, so I would love to see the
> > deprecation of link_libraries() to be reverted. But maybe I'm missing a
> > good reason for not doing so.
>
> Marcel, feel free to use link_libraries if there is no better solution.
> We do not plan to take it away.  The word 'deprecated' is too strong.
>
> One difference between link_libraries and include_directories is that
> library dependencies are chained automatically.  If you write

Alex