I was going to open an issue to add the PRIVATE keyword to ament_taret_dependencies(), but instead I'm wondering if it is still necessary now that ROS 2 packages offer modern CMake targets.

A lot of code uses ament_target_dependencies() to make a target in one package depend on everything offered by another package, whether that uses old-style standard CMake variables or modern CMake targets.

ament_target_dependencies(${PROJECT_NAME}
  rcl_logging_interface
  rcpputils
  rcutils
  spdlog
)

ament_target_dependencies() propagates include directories, compiler definitions, compiler flags, etc. However, target_link_libraries() with modern CMake targets should do all of that too. As far as I can tell, I can use target_link_library() calls with the targets that are now being exported from those packages.

target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE
  rcpputils::rcpputils
  rcutils::rcutils
  spdlog::spdlog)
target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PUBLIC
  rcl_logging_interface::rcl_logging_interface)

If I wanted to link against every target in an ament_cmake package, it looks like I could do:

target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE
  ${rcpputils_TARGETS}
  ${rcutils_TARGETS}
  spdlog::spdlog)
target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PUBLIC
  ${rcl_logging_interface_TARGETS})

If ament_target_dependencies() is around just for convenience, it seems like the standard CMake way is equally convenient. What other value does ament_target_dependencies() provide? Can it be deprecated?