How should multiple projects be managed in Qt Creator?

Question

I have an exe that depends on multiple static libs and in visual studio, they are all managed as part of 1 sln file and the exe has dependencies on the static libs.

How can this be set up in Qt Creator? Seems like there are 2 options: 1. create multiple projects in a Qt Creator "session". But a session is not shared among users, right? so i'm not sure how that would work? For example, is there a session file that gets created? 2. use subprojects. and make the static lib sub projs of the exe?

Any recommendations? I'm totally new to Qt Creator and need to use it for a linux port.

Thanks!

Answer 1

To get qmake to produce a nice .sln with subprojects, make one main .pro file with the subdirs template, and set the necessary dependencies of each project on another.

QtCreator uses qmake behind the scenes to generate a makefile and build from that, but you can also produce VS solution files by running

qmake ../path/to/source -tp vc

You can also use the Qt Visual Studio add-in to GUI-ify the process.

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Also: to make sure the executable is relinked each time a dependant static lib is changed, use

CONFIG( debug, debug|release ) {
    LIBSUFFIX = d
    win32:LIBS += -L../staticlib1/debug
    win32:PRE_TARGETDEPS += ../staticlib1/debug/libAmbrosiad.a
} else {
    LIBSUFFIX =
    win32:LIBS += -L../staticlib1/release
    win32:PRE_TARGETDEPS += ../staticlib1/release/libAmbrosia.a
}
unix:LIBS += -L ../libAmbrosia
unix:PRE_TARGETDEPS += ../libAmbrosia/libAmbrosia$${LIBSUFFIX}.a

Place something like this in your executable's .pro file, with the note that the LIBSUFFIX part is completely optional, but in line with how Qt itself is built, so that's what I use too. Mind the "release" and "debug" subdirectories absent on Linux/Mac builds. And to be complete: the rather verbose if-else condition is The Right Way (TM) to differentiate debug from release builds in qmake project files. Simpler ways may break under several circumstances.