How to use prefix, extprefix, hostprefix in configure to make a proper order in target directory?

bibasmall

Hello everyone!

I am building Qt from sources and I'm wondering how should I use -prefix , -xtprefix , -hostprefix in configure command to get the same order as here (the prebuilt Qt from the Maintance tool):

Yet I get everything (libs, binaries) placed near the source code, what is messy and makes it impossible to use with my projects. How do I separate the source code from the build?

I've seen such suggestion for Linux:

export INSTALLPATH=/home/alan/work/qt/qt_5.5.1_arm_cross_compiled
./configure ... -extprefix $INSTALLPATH/binaries -hostprefix $INSTALLPATH/tools

Would it put binaries and tools from several Qt modules to the appropriate 2 folders? Do I have to fill the lib directory myself by copying libs from each module directory in the source dir then?

sierdzio

@bibasmall All you need is -prefix. The other flags are more useful when cross-compiling.

Here is what I do when compiling Qt to get everything nicely separated. For example let's take Qt 6.5.1:

unpack Qt source code from zip / tarball to qt-everywhere-src-6.5.1
create directory 6.5.1
create directory 6.5.1-build
cd into 6.5.1-build and run ../qt-everywhere-src-6.5.1/configure here, with -prefix ../6.5.1
compile
install

Now, if all went well I can remove 6.5.1-build and qt-everywhere-src-6.5.1, they are not necessary anymore. And folder 6.5.1 contains only final, installed executables and libraries, no "garbage" from compilation.

bibasmall

@sierdzio

Thanks for your reply. Sadly it didn't help completely. Could the problem be that I'm calling nmake module-qtbase? I want to build module by module to catch build errors.
Here are my directories:

C:\Qt\5.15.2>ls
msvc2019_64  msvc2022_64_static  msvc2022_64_static-build  src

After I called:

cd C:\Qt\5.15.2\msvc2022_64_static-build && "../src/configure" -platform win32-msvc2022 -opensource -confirm-license -release -static -static-runtime -accessibility -qt-zlib -no-sql-sqlite -no-qml-debug -nomake examples -nomake tests -prefix "../msvc2022_64_static"

During configuring, I got the message:

Qt will be installed into 'C:\Qt\5.15.2\msvc2022_64_static'

After that, I called:

nmake module-qtbase

But, as the result, C:\Qt\5.15.2\msvc2022_64_static is empty, everything is placed in C:\Qt\5.15.2\msvc2022_64_static-build (for example, binaries are inside C:\Qt\5.15.2\msvc2022_64_static-build\qtbase\bin), though I didn't get any error during the build.

sierdzio

This is correct. Binaries are only installed after you run nmake install.

bibasmall

@sierdzio
You are absolutely right, thank you. I didn't know about the nmake install command :)