[Qt-interest] which build tools to use?

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 04.12.09 14:35:39, Glenn Hughes wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm just starting in on a large Qt project, and I was wondering if anyone
> had opinions on the best build process to use. I'm working under OS X for
> now. The project has several thousand source files in dozens of directories
> that build into a couple of OS X Frameworks, plus several dylibs.
> 
> Has anyone figured out how to build using only XCode, i.e. not involving
> qmake at  all? I'm currently using only XCode, so this approach would
> probably require the smallest initial time investment (but might not be a
> good long-term solution).
> 
> If that's not an option, what about CMake? (Seems powerful, but
> complicated...)

Weeeell, I might be a bit biased (as KDE develop) but CMake isn't quite
that complicated. And it does the tedious things for you, like calling
uic and moc where needed and assembling the resulting files into the
list of "to-be-compiled". Additionally its cross-platform, so in case
you ever do port to another platform at least the buildsystem won't need
to be rewritten from scratch ;)

The syntax is relatively verbose, but then again it makes the code more
readable...
 
> Does anyone have an example of how to do a large multi-target project in
> qmake with an OS X application as the output? All the examples I've seen are
> too simplistic for me to use as starting points...

I'd suggest to forget about qmake. Even Qt devs finally gave in and are
looking for alternatives. One of the bigger multi-target project thats built
by qmake is probably Qt itself. But if you look at its qmake files
you'll easily find that learning CMake and writing the necesary code
there isn't any harder ;)

Andreas

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