[question] QMake generator and Conan 2

[JohannesKauffmann]

What is your question?

Hi! I have a question regarding the QMake generator in Conan.

I've got a fair number of large projects which all build with QMake, and they've accumulated some dependencies over time. I'm looking to see if Conan would be suitable for dependency management for my projects. Looking at the Conan documentation, I see that the QMake generator in Conan 1 is a deprecated feature, and so I was wondering what the status of QMake support in Conan 2 is. As far as I can tell, QMake support is absent in Conan 2 as of now.

Right now, would you recommend to start using Conan 1 instead of 2 if I really need QMake support? If not, is QMake going to be supported in Conan 2?

Have you read the CONTRIBUTING guide?

• [x] I've read the CONTRIBUTING guide

[memsharded]

Hi @JohannesKauffmann

Thanks for your question. We prioritize build systems integrations based on user demand, and qmake hasn't got enough demand yet, so it is not in Conan 2.0 yet. But that doesn't mean that it will not be there, and if there are users that are willing to help testing the integrations and specially giving feedback (as we are not experts in qmake, for example), that would help to put it in the backlog and prioritize.

If you are just considering it now, I would suggest the following:

• Do a general evaluation of Conan, likely Conan 2.0, with another build-system integration like CMake
• Do a specific preliminary testing of the concepts of QMake integration using Conan 1.X (recipes written in Conan 2.0 should mostly work in latest Conan 1.X)
• If things look good, then give feedback, and if you have any possibility to contribute, or enter the loop for testing a new 2.0 integration, please say it, and we will try to put some time. Depending on your needs (are "components" critical for you?), coming up with a new integration is not hard, just need some time.

[xiaoliangwu]

even GNU make is not in Conan2, do I missed it? or just hasn't got enough demand yet like qmake?

[memsharded]

even GNU make is not in Conan2, do I missed it? or just hasn't got enough demand yet like qmake?

AutotoolsDeps and AutotoolsToolchain can cover most of the cases of Make, and in MakeDeps is on the way: https://github.com/conan-io/conan/pull/14133

[snps-xlwu]

I see that MakeDeps is rollout 2 days ago with 2.0.10, wonderful ! just wonder any updates on qmake generator?

[spakarl]

Too bad, I have upgraded to Conan 2 and now miss the qmake integration too. Its a big project.

I'm thinking of converting the output of another generator to the qmake .pri file. Is that possible? If yes, which generator generates the easiest output. The text generator is gone too!

[ericLemanissier]

I also miss the qmake integration. My main project is built by qmake, so conan 2 cannot be used for this project.

Maybe this could be worked around by using PkgConfigDeps generator, then use the following snippet in the .pro file:

CONFIG += link_pkgconfig
PKGCONFIG += ogg dbus-1 etc.

cf https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qmake-project-files.html#configuration-features and http://qt.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Using_pkg-config_with_qmake#How_to_use_pkg-config_with_qmake

[jjdredd]

a qmake generator would be useful. What's the effort required to port it from conan 1?

[CleiK]

I'd need it too for my projects, for now I can't update to Conan 2.0

[Matteo-Milani]

We also are using qmake generator very massively. At the moment is not sustainable to upgrade our CI/CD infrastructure to Conan 2.0. Please prioritize the activity to add qmake support to Conan 2.0!

[Matteo-Milani]

Hi @memsharded

• Do a specific preliminary testing of the concepts of QMake integration using Conan 1.X (recipes written in Conan 2.0 should mostly work in latest Conan 1.X)

Conan 1.X QMake integration is very good, we used it massively.

• If things look good, then give feedback, and if you have any possibility to contribute, or enter the loop for testing a new 2.0 integration, please say it, and we will try to put some time. Depending on your needs (are "components" critical for you?), coming up with a new integration is not hard, just need some time.

I can help a little for sure, but let me say that a simple way to test it without specific QMake expertise could be comparing the output of the two integrations. As long as the integration of QMake in Conan 2.X produces the same result as the previous one in Conan 1.X we are on the right track :)

[narcdev]

Hi, any update on this issue ?

We would like to move our projects to Conan 2, but we are stuck with Conan 1.X due to qmake support.

Thanks a lot

[uilianries]

We have the qcustomplot project in ConanCenterIndex, which so far we have been using a custom CMakeLists.txt to build it. The upstream uses qmake instead. Once we have QMake generator available, we could use qmake as well to that recipe.

[07spider70]

Is there any update? We also use qmake heavily. We are thinking about custom generator but official support will be better

[narcdev]

Hi, any update on this issue ?

We would like to move our projects to Conan 2, but we are stuck with Conan 1.X due to qmake support.

Thanks a lot

Hey,

We do not need qmake anymore, the build process of our CI has been migrate to CMake and now we use Conan2.

For information, for the migration of the .pro file we have used the tool "qmake2cmake" to help us.

And then add in the conan recipe :

[generators]
CMakeDeps
CMakeToolchain

[layout]
cmake_layout

Now everything works fine and well !