ECMGeneratePriFile

Generate a .pri file for the benefit of qmake-based projects.

As well as the function below, this module creates the cache variable ECM_MKSPECS_INSTALL_DIR and sets the default value to mkspecs/modules. This assumes Qt and the current project are both installed to the same non-system prefix. Packagers who use -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr will certainly want to set ECM_MKSPECS_INSTALL_DIR to something like share/qt5/mkspecs/modules.

The main thing is that this should be the modules subdirectory of either the default qmake mkspecs directory or of a directory that will be in the $QMAKEPATH environment variable when qmake is run.

ecm_generate_pri_file(BASE_NAME <baseName>
                      LIB_NAME <libName>
                      [VERSION <version>] # since 5.83
                      [DEPS "<dep> [<dep> [...]]"]
                      [FILENAME_VAR <filename_variable>]
                      [INCLUDE_INSTALL_DIR <dir>]
                      [LIB_INSTALL_DIR <dir>])

If your CMake project produces a Qt-based library, you may expect there to be applications that wish to use it that use a qmake-based build system, rather than a CMake-based one. Creating a .pri file will make use of your library convenient for them, in much the same way that CMake config files make things convenient for CMake-based applications. ecm_generate_pri_file() generates just such a file.

VERSION specifies the version of the library the .pri file describes. If not set, the value is taken from the context variable PROJECT_VERSION. This variable is usually set by the project(... VERSION ...) command or, if CMake policy CMP0048 is not NEW, by ECMSetupVersion. For backward-compatibility with older ECM versions the PROJECT_VERSION_STRING variable as set by ECMSetupVersion will be preferred over PROJECT_VERSION if set, unless the minimum required version of ECM is 5.83 and newer. Since 5.83.

BASE_NAME specifies the name qmake project (.pro) files should use to refer to the library (eg: KArchive). LIB_NAME is the name of the actual library to link to (ie: the first argument to add_library()). DEPS is a space-separated list of the base names of other libraries (for Qt libraries, use the same names you use with the QT variable in a qmake project file, such as “core” for QtCore). FILENAME_VAR specifies the name of a variable to store the path to the generated file in.

INCLUDE_INSTALL_DIR is the path (relative to CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX) that include files will be installed to. It defaults to ${INCLUDE_INSTALL_DIR}/<baseName> if the INCLUDE_INSTALL_DIR variable is set. If that variable is not set, the CMAKE_INSTALL_INCLUDEDIR variable is used instead, and if neither are set include is used. LIB_INSTALL_DIR operates similarly for the installation location for libraries; it defaults to ${LIB_INSTALL_DIR}, ${CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR} or lib, in that order.

Example usage:

ecm_generate_pri_file(
    BASE_NAME KArchive
    LIB_NAME KF5KArchive
    DEPS "core"
    FILENAME_VAR pri_filename
    VERSION 4.2.0
)
install(FILES ${pri_filename} DESTINATION ${ECM_MKSPECS_INSTALL_DIR})

A qmake-based project that wished to use this would then do:

QT += KArchive

in their .pro file.

Since pre-1.0.0.