How to maintain self-made libraries? - c++

Question

I'm using Qt Creator 2.7.0 on ubuntu 13.04.
I've just recently ran into the idea of using libraries, and they're a whole new thing for me.
I've just figured that I need to have the following in my application's .pro file to use a library of my own:
LIBS += -L<lib's dir> -l<lib's name>
INCLUDEPATH += <headers' dir>
// for example:
LIBS += -L$$PWD/../MyLib/release/ -lMyLib
INCLUDEPATH += $$PWD/../MyLib/src/
As you see, I have all my projects in a folder called Programming (the .. in this case)
Each of my project have .pro and .pro.user files in the root, source files in a sub folder /src and the release in an other sub folder /release.
So, this is what my Programming folder looks like:
Programming
MyLib
MyLib.pro
MyLib.pro.user
src
myclass.h
myclass.cpp
release
libMyLib.a
Makefile
myclass.o
MyApp
MyApp.pro
MyApp.pro.user
src
main.cpp
release
main.o
Makefile
MyApp
However, I figured that I could create a folder Programming/libs/, and add libMyLib.a and myclass.h files inside that libs folder.
I would do the same for all of my libraries, and then I could always include them like this:
LIBS += -L$$PWD/../lib/ -lMyLib
INCLUDEPATH += $$PWD/../lib/
The problem is, I'd get include path for every library stored on my computer and the libs folder would become a mess, especially if there are two headers with same name on different libraries.
I'm really new to using libraries, is there a general solution on how they should be located on your computer, and how to include them into your projects?

Answer 1

You could mimic libraries like Boost and have a directory tree like this:
MyLib
build
Makefile, .pro or .sln file here
lib
MyLib
// your .so / .a here
include
MyLib
// your .h here
src
// your .cpp here
CMake or qmake file here
This way you have an out-of-source build tree (in build/) so that your binary files are not mixed up with your source files.
The lib/ and include/ directories are handy because you can then define an install build target. If you then type
make install
it will copy everything to usr/local/lib and user/local/include so that your App can simply do #include <MyLib/some_header.h> and you can link directly against your library binaries (because you copied everything to a location in your system wide path). There is also no danger of name clashes because you wrapped it inside your own MyLib subdirectory.