After quite a bit of frustration with qmake, I have found what I think is the answer to your question. If not, then I have learned the way that I will use qmake until I find something better, because this is still a little bit ugly. I set up a demo project, this is my directory structure (files have extensions, folders do not):
MyProj
MyProj.pro
myproj-core
myproj-core.pro
globals.h
MyProjCore.h
MyProjCore.cpp
myproj-app
myproj-app.pro
main.cpp
We start with MyProj.pro
as a subdirs
project, which is the key to doing what you ask. Basically, instead of depending on other projects to specify debug/release and all sorts of other junk, you just set it on the one qmake file. It doesn't let you make only what you need, but it's the best solution I could come up with. Here are the contents:
TEMPLATE = subdirs
CONFIG += ordered
SUBDIRS = myproj-core \
myproj-app
myproj-app.depends = myproj-core
myproj-core.pro
is your typical shared object library:
QT -= gui
TARGET = myproj-core
TEMPLATE = lib
DEFINES += MYPROJCORE_LIBRARY
SOURCES += MyProjCore.cpp
HEADERS += MyProjCore.h \
globals.h
myproj-app.pro
is consumer application, where the little rebuild-when-needed trick is:
QT -= gui
TARGET = myproj-app
CONFIG += console
CONFIG -= app_bundle
TEMPLATE = app
INCLUDEPATH += ../myproj-core
LIBS += ../myproj-core/libmyproj-core.so
PRE_TARGETDEPS += ../myproj-core/libmyproj-core.so
SOURCES += main.cpp
I hope this solves your problem, as I know it solved mine!
EDIT: I made a file specifically for building the dependencies for me, I store it in a sibling folder of each of my projects (child of the MyProj in the directory structure specified above) called dependencies.pri
:
win32: SONAME=dll
else: SONAME=so
for(dep, DEPENDENCY_LIBRARIES) {
LIBS += $${DESTDIR}/lib$${dep}.$${SONAME}
PRE_TARGETDEPS += $${DESTDIR}/lib$${dep}.$${SONAME}
}
So at the bottom of all the consuming applications, I can add the lines:
DEPENDENCY_LIBRARIES = myproj-core
include(../config/dependencies.pri)
This assumes that you are copying the libraries to some shared location and/or moving them around as needed, so my function might not work for you, but I figured I would add it to the solution.