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This tutorial teaches you how to use qmake. We recommend that you read the qmake user guide after completing this tutorial.
Let's assume that you have just finished a basic implementation of your application, and you have created the following files:
hello.cpp
hello.h
main.cpp
You will find these files in qt/qmake/example. The only other thing you know about the setup of the application is that it's written in Qt. First, using your favorite plain text editor, create a file called hello.pro in qt/qmake/tutorial. The first thing you need to do is add the lines that tell qmake about the source and header files that are part of your development project.
We'll add the source files to the project file first. To do this you need to use the SOURCES variable. Just start a new line with SOURCES += and put hello.cpp after it. You should have something like:
SOURCES += hello.cpp
We repeat this for each source file in the project, until we end up with:
SOURCES += hello.cpp
SOURCES += main.cpp
If you prefer to use a Make-like syntax, with all the files listed in one go you can use the newline escaping like this:
SOURCES = hello.cpp \
main.cpp
Now that the source files are listed in the project file, the header files must be added. These are added in exactly the same way as source files, except that the variable name is HEADERS:
Once you have done this, your project file should look something like this:
HEADERS += hello.h
SOURCES += hello.cpp
SOURCES += main.cpp
The target name is set automatically; it is the same as the project file, but with the suffix appropriate to the platform. For example, if the project file is called 'hello.pro', the target will be 'hello.exe' on Windows and 'hello' on Unix. If you want to use a different name you can set it in the project file:
TARGET = helloworld
The final step is to set the CONFIG variable. Since this is a Qt application, we need to put 'qt' on the CONFIG line so that qmake will add the relevant libraries to be linked against and ensure that build lines for moc and uic are included in the makefile.
The finished project file should look like this:
CONFIG += qt
HEADERS += hello.h
SOURCES += hello.cpp
SOURCES += main.cpp
You can now use qmake to generate a makefile for your application. On the command line, in your application directory, type:
qmake -o Makefile hello.pro
Then type make or nmake depending on the compiler you use.
The release version of an application doesn't contain any debugging symbols or other debuggin information. During development it is useful to produce a debugging version of the application that has the relevant information. This is easily achieved by adding 'debug' to the CONFIG variable in the project file.
For example:
CONFIG += qt debug
HEADERS += hello.h
SOURCES += hello.cpp
SOURCES += main.cpp
Use qmake as before to generate a makefile and you will be able to debug your application.
After a few hours of coding, you might have made a start on the platform specific part of your application, and decided to keep the platform dependent code separate. So you now have two new files to include into your project file - hellowin.cpp and hellounix.cpp. We can't just add these to the SOURCES variable since this will put both files in the makefile. So what we need to do here is to use a scope which will be processed depending on which platform qmake is run on.
A simple scope which will add in the platform dependent file for Windows looks like this:
win32 {
SOURCES += hellowin.cpp
}
So if qmake is run on Windows, it will add hellowin.cpp to the list of source files. If qmake is run on any other platform, it will simply ignore it. Now all that is left to be done is to create a scope for the unix dependent file.
When you have done that, your project file should now look something like this:
CONFIG += qt debug
HEADERS += hello.h
SOURCES += hello.cpp
SOURCES += main.cpp
win32 {
SOURCES += hellowin.cpp
}
unix {
SOURCES += hellounix.cpp
}
Use qmake as before to generate a makefile.
You may not want to create a makefile if a certain file doesn't exist. We can check if a file exists by using the exists() function. We can stop qmake from processing by using the error() function. This works in the same way as scopes. Simply replace the scope condition with the function. A check for a main.cpp file looks like this:
!exists( main.cpp ) {
error( "No main.cpp file found" )
}
The "!" is used to negate the test, i.e. exists( main.cpp ) is true if the file exists and !exists( main.cpp ) is true if the file doesn't exist.
CONFIG += qt debug
HEADERS += hello.h
SOURCES += hello.cpp
SOURCES += main.cpp
win32 {
SOURCES += hellowin.cpp
}
unix {
SOURCES += hellounix.cpp
}
!exists( main.cpp ) {
error( "No main.cpp file found" )
}
Use qmake as before to generate a makefile. If you rename main.cpp temporarily, you will see the message and qmake will stop processing.
Suppose you use Windows and you want to be able to see the qDebug() statements when you run your application on the command line. Unless you build your application with the console setting, you won't see the output. We can easily put console on the CONFIG line so that on Windows the makefile will have this setting. But let's say that we only want to add the CONFIG line if we are running on Windows and when debug is already on the CONFIG line. This requires using two nested scopes; just create one scope, then create the other inside that one. Put the settings to be processed inside the last scope, like this:
win32 {
debug {
CONFIG += console
}
}
Nested scopes can be joined together using colons, so the final project file looks like this:
CONFIG += qt debug
HEADERS += hello.h
SOURCES += hello.cpp
SOURCES += main.cpp
win32 {
SOURCES += hellowin.cpp
}
unix {
SOURCES += hellounix.cpp
}
!exists( main.cpp ) {
error( "No main.cpp file found" )
}
win32:debug {
CONFIG += console
}
That's it! You have now completed the tutorial for qmake, and are ready to write project files for your development projects.
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