I am on MacOS 10.13.3, using Xcode 9 as my IDE, and trying to include Qt 5.10 in my Xcode project. I have installed Qt (with docs and examples) with Homebrew and ran many of them in QtCreator. Everything worked well up to this point.
My Xcode project is an extensive, complex project, the development of which has been active for a few years now, so switching to QtCreator or changing the structure of my project is not an option. I really need to add Qt to my existing Xcode project, which IMHO should be quite a natural thing to do given that Qt is a software development framework. However I have not been able to accomplish that yet. The upside is that in the process I have been learning quite a bit about Qt and its ecosystem. I now know how to use qmake, how to set up and successfully compile a project in QtCreator and how to create an Xcode project from QtCreator using qmake. As I said, I have been running many Qt examples and read pretty much every piece of documentation, blog and SO post I could find about this subject. To my surprise I haven't found a direct solution to this problem anywhere on the net.
So far I have included in my Xcode environment QtCore.framework, QtWidgets.framework and QtGui.framework, configured Xcode with the right search paths (Qt finds its files and frameworks) and include the right Qt headers in the code. However upon building my target I get a series of meaningless compilation errors.
Basically - if my understanding is correct - I can't just import Qt's components and frameworks I need, and set the right paths in Xcode just like I would do with any other framework. Qt 'features' a preprocessing step using MOC and UIC that sets it apart from other tools. So I examined the output of qmake and there are two files that the building system produces - qt_makeqmake.mak and qt_preprocess.mak which I think are responsible for the code generation step. Basically this is what I don't know how to translate into my Xcode environment.
Please feel free to tell me if my approach is not correct.
I am open to any advice or suggestion.
I would really like to integrate Qt into my project as Qt is such a powerful and complete framework. I hope someone will be able to help.
Thank you.
1 / In addition to setting the right path to Qt libraries and header files, which is fromwhat you said already done, you need to invoke the moc (Meta-Object Compiler) on your own Qt class which includes the Q_OBJECT macro. (basically every class you have made that are using signal/slot system).
MOChttp://doc.qt.io/qt-5/moc.html
This step must be done BEFORE compiling the project, and the result (the cpp generated moc files) must be compiled AND linked.
Now I am not an expert in XCode and MacOS development but for sure you have a way to add a custom step in your build process for doing that
2/ For UIC files : follow approximatively what is explained here (answer of Preetam, not the one validated) to obtain a .cpp and an .h file that you must include in your project too.
Hope this answer will help and point you toward the rigth direction.
Here is a post explained more in detail what I explained :
https://fmilicchio.bitbucket.io/2013/01/xcode-and-qt4-and-qt5/?
Related
I'm really new to Qt creator and actually I think my very short experience with it didn't go so well.
Anyways, my question is:
I used to write C++ programs using Code::Blocks IDE, now I'm trying to make some simple GUI to my program. So that's really why I used Qt creator in the first place.
I have multiple C++ files (.cpp) and (.h) how can I use them into Qt and integrate both "Qt user interface" with my C++ files.
I tried to google about it but got nothing. If anyone can help me how to start, or point out some good tutorial.
You mostly need to write a Qt project file (with some .pro extension) for Qmake (perhaps using qmake -project), then use qmake to generate a Makefile, then use GNU make to build your program.
Qtcreator is an IDE which might help you, but if you want to use some other editor or IDE, you can run the commands mentioned above appropriately. Actually, once you have generated once your Makefile, it might be auto-regenerated appropriately when needed. So configuring your IDE to use make is probably enough.
I'm using the ArUco library with OpenCV (more information here) but I can't find a way to build and run a program from scratch.
Once I installed the library I have access to different examples but if I want for instance to create a new file and add the library headers inside it, how can I compile and run it ? (with a command line or IDE, anything is fine)
Thank you
I sent and email to the library's author and he added clear instructions at the end of the project webpage :)
It seems you need to learn how to use your IDE's, compilation tools and general compilation basic stuff. This is not a question related to Aruco, or mostly any other tags you have set.
Try to lean CMake first, 'cause Aruco compilation is based on CMake: http://www.cmake.org/
You can start by just editing the aruco_simple example.
For a IDE that works right away with CMake you can try either Qt Creator >3.1 or KDevelop. Both free.
I have been using Qt Creator as an IDE for some C++ project (non-QT) and I love it. Recently I have been thinking to try out Eclipse mainly for learning a new tool and also the fact that I'm not a big fan of the debugger mode in Qt Creator!
Anyhow, I figured I could potentially use the makefile generated by the qmake, but though hey let's also learn CMake! So, I was wondering if someone could point me to some nice tutorials on this (I have not had much luck myself)? Specifically, I like to have the ability to create and maintain CMakeList.txt files and build/run the project directly within Eclipse ... just as you would by editing a .pro file inside Qt Creator.
Thanks
CMake includes an Eclipse CDT4 generator since version 2.6; you should probably take a look at this page, it explains three different possibilities for using Eclipse and CMake together. From my personal experience, solution 1 works pretty well in Unix environments.
I am trying to open an existing C++ open-source library in Xcode to publish it with my own modification/additions. The library is Tesseract-OCR, which does not include a .xcodeproj file.
Since Xcode can function as an IDE, is it possible to open a bunch of files as a single project in Xcode? Is there an easy way to produce an Xcode project?
There are several ways you could do it, depending on the level of IDE integration you want. There's no direct way of importing a Makefile-based project into Xcode. You can create a project that builds via the Makefile, but you wouldn't get many of the benefits of using an IDE, since the editor features such as word completion rely on Xcode being able to parse the files in the project. You will be able to use the debugger though. To do this, create a new project and add a custom target with a script build phase that just calls down to Makefile.
If however the project you're building compiles very easily, ie without requiring a lot of macros to be set up, include paths, etc, then it may be simple to just create an empty project and merely add all source files to it. I've used this method extensively for building boost libraries. If this is a configure && make type project then you will probably have to run the configure step first, and ensure any top level config.h files are included in the project.
If the project has a complex makefile then it is likely to be an involved task to create a useful Xcode project
I realise you asked explicitly for Xcode, but in case you were actually trying to solve the problem of "I have existing C++ code which builds and runs fine from the command line, and I'd like to code and debug it in an IDE, what should I do?" my firm recommendation would be to avoid Xcode and go for Eclipse.
The reason is that as far as I can tell, Xcode has no way of ingesting the command line build environment and effectively requires you to recreate the make process inside Xcode from scratch. Fine for tiny projects, but anything with more than a few source files and it quickly becomes painful. Whereas in Eclipse everything is built around Makefiles. So in my case I got to the "step through code with working code completion" in Eclipse a lot quicker vs. never in Xcode. This of course could be because I'm an Xcode noob, but my 2c.
To create an Xcode project from an existing cmake project, you can run cmake -G Xcode. It produces some folders and files apart from the project file, so it might be better to create a folder for it first. For example:
mkdir -p build/xcode
cd build/xcode
cmake -G Xcode ../..
Xcode is a useable IDE for library creation.
Of course a good first step is to see if the one source code will build on its own with configure scripts that are included.
If not, it becomes a question of how many libraries you need to link in.
There are resources online (or at least there used to be) for using Xcode (or perhaps it's forerunner Product builder) for porting Unix projects to Mac.
Good tutorial at: http://www.macresearch.org/tutorial-introducing-xcode-30-organizer
Another good reference is Darwin Ports.
As for doing this on your own. You can build c++ based libraries in XCode. People do that every day. You can even use one of the Xcode templates to get you started.
However, library dev requires more experience with Xcode then say a simple Cocoa "Hello World" app.
The remaining questions will be assuring that the source code's dependencies are already built into the Mac's SDK. (Don't hold your breath for linking to MFC)
It's a general question... So it's a general answer.
In Xcode8,there is "Xcode->file->add files to...",then choose your files.If you want to add several files at a time,press "Cmd" when you are choosing.
I have a fairly complex Xcode project and I want to add Qt to it. I know that I can create a new project using qmake -spec macx-xcode project.pro but I don't want to have to hand configure my old project over the auto generated Qt project. Is there another option?
[edited in a more general question below]
It seems like it would be easier to simply use qmake as my build system. Hence, adding my old project build process to the .pro file and use that to generate a new .xcodeproj? I would only do this if I could comprehensively configure the .pro file so that I don't have to hand configure the .xcodeproj - is this doable? I really don't want to have to mess around with hand configuring the .xcodeproj each time I run qmake.
Essentially, is qmake (or a meta-build in general) a valid substitute for a normal build system, such that I don't need to tweak the resulting build system generated by qmake?
Are there better resources besides the manual and tutorial provided by Trolltech? I'm concerned that wikipedia says that qmake is primarily for internal use and not well documented.
One of the main points of using Qt is the portability of the Gui. It only makes sense to extend this feature to your build process by using qmake and allowing users/developers generate whichever build system they want to use (make, visualstudio, xcode).
No, qmake is not well documented and more poignantly there are not manifold examples like there are for make. But, it is similar to make and should be intuitive. Why not absorb the overhead to learn it and pass the benefit on to your users/developers?
Build an empty xcode project with qmake and incorporate the compiler settings to your existing project from the generated Makefile. Of course, you will have to set up your existing project to run qmake as a pre-build step if you are using Qt-specific extensions.
What do you think is the easiest method for integrating established projects with Qt?
That depends on the nature of your work. I wish I could have given a more specific answer here but I really can't. Also, are you using Qt professional? In that case, you can get support (at least that's how it was, during 3.3 when I last worked on it for anything production-quality). If all you care about Qt is the graphics part, I'd say don't bother changing your build system, rather see to it that you get the code to compile and link and run just fine. But, if you are going to use signals and slots and what not -- think about moving over.
Would you recommend I do the xcodeproj merge I asked about and which you answered, or should I start from scratch with qmake like I edited a question about?
Again, look at the size of your project. Assuming a fairly complex project, I'd hazard a guess that you have about 2/3 man-days worth of effort to rewrite the build system? Is this project a serious one, something that will be maintained over a period of time? Is this cross-platform? Will you be using Qt throughout?
If there is an overbearing reason to feel that Qt is the way forward I'd suggest that you start using their build system.
It's really, really, really nice to have a single IDE and debugger that works on all the platforms you are writing for, but I have found that it's also pretty nice to just use the native tools.
Once you put in the time to learn each build system, it's pretty easy to maintain the projects to a very precise degree.