Getting started with CMake

CMake is a group of tools that allow to build, test, and package applications. Just like Qt, it is available on all major development platforms. It is also supported by various IDE's, including Qt Creator.

In this section we will show the most basic way to use Qt in a CMake project. First, we create a basic console application. Then, we extend the project into a GUI application that uses Qt Widgets.

If you want to know how to build an existing CMake project with Qt, see the documentation on how to build projects with CMake on the command line.

Building a C++ console application

A CMake project is defined by files written in the CMake language. The main file is called CMakeLists.txt, and is usually placed in the same directory as the actual program sources.

Here is a typical CMakeLists.txt file for a console application written in C++ using Qt:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)

project(helloworld VERSION 1.0.0 LANGUAGES CXX)

set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON)

find_package(Qt6 REQUIRED COMPONENTS Core)
qt_standard_project_setup()

qt_add_executable(helloworld
    main.cpp
)

target_link_libraries(helloworld PRIVATE Qt6::Core)

Let's go through the content.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)

cmake_minimum_required() specifies the minimum CMake version that the application requires. Qt itself requires at least CMake version 3.16. If you use a Qt that was built statically - the default in Qt for iOS and Qt for WebAssembly - you need CMake 3.21.1 or newer.

project(helloworld VERSION 1.0.0 LANGUAGES CXX)

project() sets a project name and the default project version. The LANGUAGES argument tells CMake that the program is written in C++.

set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON)

Qt 6 requires a compiler supporting C++ version 17 or newer. Enforcing this by setting the CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD, CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED variables will let CMake print an error if the compiler is too old.

find_package(Qt6 REQUIRED COMPONENTS Core)

This tells CMake to look up Qt 6, and import the Core module. There is no point in continuing if CMake cannot locate the module, so we do set the REQUIRED flag to let CMake abort in this case.

If successful, the module will set some CMake variables documented in Module variables. It furthermore imports the Qt6::Core target that we use below.

For find_package to be successful, CMake must find the Qt installation. There are different ways you can tell CMake about Qt, but the most common and recommended approach is to set the CMake cache variable CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH to include the Qt 6 installation prefix. Note that Qt Creator will handle this transparently for you.

qt_standard_project_setup()

The qt_standard_project_setup command sets project-wide defaults for a typical Qt application.

Among other things, this command sets the CMAKE_AUTOMOC variable to ON, which instructs CMake to automatically set up rules so that Qt's Meta-Object Compiler (moc) is called transparently, when required.

See qt_standard_project_setup's reference for details.

qt_add_executable(helloworld
    main.cpp
)

qt_add_executable() tells CMake that we want to build an executable (so not a library) called helloworld as a target. It is a wrapper around the built-in add_executable() command, and provides additional logic to automatically handle things like linking of Qt plugins in static Qt builds, platform-specific customization of library names, and so on.

The target should be built from the C++ source file main.cpp.

Typically, you do not list header files here. This is different from qmake, where header files need to be explicitly listed so that they are processed by the Meta-Object Compiler (moc).

For creating libraries, see qt_add_library.

target_link_libraries(helloworld PRIVATE Qt6::Core)

Finally, target_link_libraries tells CMake that the helloworld executable makes use of Qt Core by referencing the Qt6::Core target imported by the find_package() call above. This will not only add the right arguments to the linker, but also makes sure that the right include directories, compiler definitions are passed to the C++ compiler. The PRIVATE keyword is not strictly necessary for an executable target, but it is good practice to specify it. If helloworld was a library rather than an executable, then either PRIVATE or PUBLIC should be specified (PUBLIC if the library mentions anything from Qt6::Core in its headers, PRIVATE otherwise).

Building a C++ GUI application

In the last section we showed the CMakeLists.txt file for a simple console application. We will now create a GUI application that uses the Qt Widgets module.

This is the full project file:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)

project(helloworld VERSION 1.0.0 LANGUAGES CXX)

set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON)

find_package(Qt6 REQUIRED COMPONENTS Widgets)
qt_standard_project_setup()

qt_add_executable(helloworld
    mainwindow.ui
    mainwindow.cpp
    main.cpp
)

target_link_libraries(helloworld PRIVATE Qt6::Widgets)

set_target_properties(helloworld PROPERTIES
    WIN32_EXECUTABLE ON
    MACOSX_BUNDLE ON
)

Let's walk through the changes we have made.

find_package(Qt6 REQUIRED COMPONENTS Widgets)

In the find_package call, we replace Core with Widgets. This will locate the Qt6Widgets module and provide the Qt6::Widgets targets we later link against.

Note that the application will still link against Qt6::Core, because Qt6::Widgets depends on it.

qt_standard_project_setup()

In addition to CMAKE_AUTOMOC, qt_standard_project_setup sets the CMAKE_AUTOUIC variable to ON. This will automatically create rules to invoke Qt's User Interface Compiler (uic) on .ui source files.

qt_add_executable(helloworld
    mainwindow.ui
    mainwindow.cpp
    main.cpp
)

We add a Qt Designer file (mainwindow.ui) and its corresponding C++ source file (mainwindow.cpp) to the application target's sources.

target_link_libraries(helloworld PRIVATE Qt6::Widgets)

In the target_link_libraries command, we link against Qt6::Widgets instead of Qt6::Core.

set_target_properties(helloworld PROPERTIES
    WIN32_EXECUTABLE ON
    MACOSX_BUNDLE ON
)

Finally, we set properties on our application target with the following effects:

• Prevent the creation of a console window on Windows.
• Create an application bundle on macOS.

See the CMake Documentation for more information about these target properties.

Structuring projects

Projects that contain more than just one target will benefit from a clear project file structure. We will use CMake's subdirectory feature.

As we plan to extend the project with more targets, we move the source files of the application into a subdirectory and create a new CMakeLists.txt in there.

<project root>
├── CMakeLists.txt
└── src
    └── app
        ├── CMakeLists.txt
        ├── main.cpp
        ├── mainwindow.cpp
        ├── mainwindow.h
        └── mainwindow.ui

The top-level CMakeLists.txt contains the overall project setup, find_package and add_subdirectory calls:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)

project(helloworld VERSION 1.0.0 LANGUAGES CXX)

set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON)

find_package(Qt6 REQUIRED COMPONENTS Widgets)
qt_standard_project_setup()

add_subdirectory(src/app)

Variables that are set in this file are visible in subdirectory project files.

The application's project file src/app/CMakeLists.txt contains the executable target:

qt_add_executable(helloworld
    mainwindow.ui
    mainwindow.cpp
    main.cpp
)

target_link_libraries(helloworld PRIVATE Qt6::Widgets)

set_target_properties(helloworld PROPERTIES
    WIN32_EXECUTABLE ON
    MACOSX_BUNDLE ON
)

Such a structure will make it easy to add more targets to the project such as libraries or unit tests.

Building libraries

As the project grows, you may want to turn parts of your application code into a library that is used by the application and possibly unit tests. This section shows how to create such a library.

Our application currently contains business logic directly in main.cpp. We extract the code into a new static library called businesslogic in the subdirectory "src/businesslogic" as explained in the previous section.

For the sake of simplicity, the library consists of just one C++ source file and its corresponding header file that is included by the application's main.cpp:

<project root>
├── CMakeLists.txt
└── src
    ├── app
    │   ├── ...
    │   └── main.cpp
    └── businesslogic
        ├── CMakeLists.txt
        ├── businesslogic.cpp
        └── businesslogic.h

Let's have a look at the library's project file (src/businesslogic/CMakeLists.txt).

qt_add_library(businesslogic STATIC
    businesslogic.cpp
)
target_link_libraries(businesslogic PRIVATE Qt6::Core)
target_include_directories(businesslogic INTERFACE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR})

Let's go through the content.

qt_add_library(businesslogic STATIC
    businesslogic.cpp
)

The add_library command creates the library businesslogic. Later, we will let the application link against this target.

The STATIC keyword denotes a static library. If we wanted to create a shared or dynamic library, we would use the SHARED keyword.

target_link_libraries(businesslogic PRIVATE Qt6::Core)

We have a static library and don't actually have to link other libraries. But as our library uses classes from QtCore, we add a link dependency to Qt6::Core. This pulls in the necessary QtCore include paths and preprocessor defines.

target_include_directories(businesslogic INTERFACE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR})

The library API is defined in the header file businesslogic/businesslogic.h. By calling target_include_directories, we make sure that the absolute path to the businesslogic directory is automatically added as an include path to all targets using our library.

This frees us in main.cpp from using relative paths to locate businesslogic.h. Instead, we can just write

#include <businesslogic.h>

Last, we must add the library's subdirectory to the top-level project file:

add_subdirectory(src/app)
add_subdirectory(src/businesslogic)

Using libraries

To use the library we created in the previous section, we instruct CMake to link against it:

target_link_libraries(helloworld PRIVATE
    businesslogic
    Qt6::Widgets
)

This ensures that businesslogic.h is found when main.cpp is compiled. Furthermore, the businesslogic static library will become a part of the helloworld executable.

In CMake terms, the library businesslogic specifies usage requirements (the include path) that every consumer of our library (the application) has to satisfy. The target_link_libraries command takes care of that.

Adding resources

We want to display some images in our application, so we add them using the Qt Resource System.

qt_add_resources(helloworld imageresources
    PREFIX "/images"
    FILES logo.png splashscreen.png
)

The qt_add_resources command automatically creates a Qt resource containing the referenced images. From the C++ source code, you can access the images by prepending the specified resource prefix:

logoLabel->setPixmap(QPixmap(":/images/logo.png"));

The qt_add_resources command takes as the first argument either a variable name or a target name. We recommend to use the target-based variant of this command as shown in the example above.

Adding translations

Translations of strings in a Qt project are encoded in .ts files. See Internationalization with Qt for details.

To add .ts files to your project, use the qt_add_translations command.

The following example adds a German and a French translation file to the helloworld target:

qt_add_translations(helloworld
    TS_FILES helloworld_de.ts helloworld_fr.ts)

This creates build system rules to automatically generate .qm files from the .ts files. By default, the .qm files are embedded into a resource and are accessible under the "/i18n" resource prefix.

To update the entries in the .ts file, build the update_translations target:

$ cmake --build . --target update_translations

To trigger the generation of the .qm files manually, build the release_translations target:

$ cmake --build . --target release_translations

For more information about how to influence the handling of .ts files and the embedding into a resource, see the qt_add_translations documentation.

The qt_add_translations command is a convenience wrapper. For more fine-grained control of how .ts files and .qm files are handled, use the underlying commands qt_add_lupdate and qt_add_lrelease.

Further reading

The official CMake Documentation is an invaluable source for working with CMake.

The official CMake Tutorial covers common build system tasks.

The book Professional CMake: A Practical Guide provides a great introduction to the most relevant CMake features.