qiBuild: the build framework

Basic concepts

qiBuild is a generic framework that helps for managing several projects and their dependencies.

It comes with a set of tools, which are listed below.

Every tool comes with a matching script (qibuild, qisrc, etc.), and must be used from a worktree.

Every project must be inside the worktree, and should have a qiproject.xml at its root. This is how the scripts can find the projects paths when they look for dependencies, for instance.

Read more about this in this section: Worktree and projects.

So, in order to be able to use qiBuild scripts, you should first create a worktree with qibuild init, and then register projects paths with qisrc add.

For instance:

cd ~/work
qibuild init
mkdir my_first_proj
# edit my_first_proj/qiproject.xml
qisrc add my_first_proj

qibuild: C++ compilation made easy

qibuild aims to make compilation of your sources easy. It manages dependencies between projects and supports cross-compilation.

By default qibuild uses libraries provided by your system, but you can also use qitoolchain to manage sets of pre-compiled packages (called toolchains) if you want. Cross-compilation is then just a matter of using a specific toolchain.

qibuild is truly cross-platform: it is tested on Linux, Mac and Windows. Being based on the well-known CMake build system, it allows you to use your existing tools such as gcc, Make, or Visual Studio.

The qibuild framework tries hard to stand out of your way: it remains close to standards, and will play nice with other build systems.

qibuild is composed of two parts:

  • the qibuild CMake framework, that simplifies authoring CMakeLists.txt.
  • the qibuild/qitoolchain command line tools, that helps build projects while taking dependencies into account and generate re-distributable binary packages.

Is qibuild the only one build framework?

Of course not!

You can have a loot at

Going further with qibuild

Read more about qibuild in the Building C++ projects with qibuild, or follow the qibuild Programming guide.

qisrc: Managing git projects

The motivation for qisrc is to make it possible to work with several git repositories at the same time.

Notes:
  • Yes, we are aware that git submodules exists, but we wanted something more flexible and easier to use.
  • qisrc has more or less the same features than repo, (including gerrit support for code review), but, contrary to repo, it preserves a clean branch for you to work in and you can still use git normally.

qidoc: Building documentation

qidoc is a small tool that helps you write documentation in sphinx or in doxygen, spread across several projects, while making sure you can generate re-locatable HTML documentation.

qilinguist: Translating projects

qilinguist provides tools to help internationalization of any kind of project, using gettext or Qt Linguist as backend.

qipy: qibuild and Python

qipy makes it possible to use Python extensions written in C/C++ with qibuild with pure Python libraries.

qipkg: Generate binary packages

qipkg lets you make packages the same way Choregraphe does, but from the command line, and also lets you embed code written in C++ or Python inside the package.

Tutorial

See qipkg tutorial

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