qmake Common Projects

The app Template

The app template tells qmake to generate a Makefile that will build an application. With this template, the type of application can be specified by adding one of the following options to the CONFIG variable definition:

When using this template the following qmake system variables are recognized. You should use these in your .pro file to specify information about your application.

• HEADERS - A list of all the header files for the application.
• SOURCES - A list of all the source files for the application.
• FORMS - A list of all the .ui files (created using Qt Designer) for the application.
• LEXSOURCES - A list of all the lex source files for the application.
• YACCSOURCES - A list of all the yacc source files for the application.
• TARGET - Name of the executable for the application. This defaults to the name of the project file. (The extension, if any, is added automatically).
• DESTDIR - The directory in which the target executable is placed.
• DEFINES - A list of any additional pre-processor defines needed for the application.
• INCLUDEPATH - A list of any additional include paths needed for the application.
• DEPENDPATH - The dependency search path for the application.
• VPATH - The search path to find supplied files.
• DEF_FILE - Windows only: A .def file to be linked against for the application.
• RC_FILE - Windows only: A resource file for the application.
• RES_FILE - Windows only: A resource file to be linked against for the application.

You only need to use the system variables that you have values for, for instance, if you don't have any extra INCLUDEPATHs then you don't need to specify any, qmake will add in the default ones needed. For instance, an example project file might look like this:

    TEMPLATE = app
    DESTDIR  = c:/helloapp
    HEADERS += hello.h
    SOURCES += hello.cpp
    SOURCES += main.cpp
    DEFINES += QT_DLL
    CONFIG  += qt warn_on release

For items that are single valued, e.g. the template or the destination directory, we use "="; but for multi-valued items we use "+=" to add to the existing items of that type. Using "=" replaces the item's value with the new value, for example if we wrote DEFINES=QT_DLL, all other definitions would be deleted.

    CONFIG      += designer plugin debug_and_release

    CONFIG += debug_and_release

    CONFIG(debug, debug|release) {
        TARGET = debug_binary
    } else {
        TARGET = release_binary
    }

    make all

    CONFIG += build_all

    make

    make install

    CONFIG(debug, debug|release) {
        unix: TARGET = $$join(TARGET,,,_debug)
        else: TARGET = $$join(TARGET,,d)
    }