cmake tests and libs separate view in qt creator

[Sandon]

Hi all,

I've just switched to cmake and I'm trying to do one thing that in qmake was very simple.

I have many libraries, each of them with many tests under the tests directory.

In the past I had a .pro file that referenced to other .pro files: one for the .pro of all the libs and another one for the .pro of all the tests.
In this way in Qt creator I had the two things, libs and tests, separated.

I'm trying to make the same thing now with cmake, both using add_subdirectory() and include(). I have tried all the possible ways BUT it does not seem possible to achieve this simple goal.
In all cases the tests appear under the library folder. I am starting to thing that the problem is not cmake but how qt creator manages cmake projects. I hope there is a way because I really liked that organization.

The only alternative way I can think of is to open two separate cmake projects in qt creator, one for libs and another for the tests,but this is not what I want to.

Thank you in advance

Edit: I am not using ctest but google test and it would be awesome to make this work not only for tests but for any combination of libs

[sierdzio]

I simply have tests in different folder than other code, which also means separate cmake file (add_subdirectory). I think this is the most natural way to do it, since the unit tests need to link to your library anyway (so they need to treat your library as a separate part of the project).

[Sandon]

I don't know if I have understood what you're saying. I'll try to clarify:

My repo is divided in N libraries: libA libB libC .. libN
Each lib has (at least) two sub-directories: src and tests.
Each lib has a CMakeLists.txt file with inside add_subdirectory of the src and tests folders.
The tests folder contains more directories, for different test executables, each of them containing a CMakeLists.txt file.

I prefer to have tests for libX inside the libX tests subfolder as in this case the library is self-contained.
In this way I can just do whatever I want: open a single lib as a project, open all of them or open them as a group in the particular view I need for the moment. This is because, visually, it's much better to have some libs/tests organized in a particular way.

Again, with qmake, there was no problem and I could really customize everything as I wanted. Cmake should have been an improvement, but if this simple thing is not possible , I'm starting to have some doubts about this switch.

A visual view of my repo:

project/
├── CMakeLists.txt
├── libA/
│   ├── CMakeLists.txt
│   ├── src/
│   └── tests/
│       ├── test1/
│       ├── test2/
│       └── CMakeLists.txt
├── libB/
│   ├── CMakeLists.txt
│   ├── src/
│   └── tests/
│       ├── test1/
│       ├── test2/
│       └── CMakeLists.txt
└── ...other libs...

what I'd like to see is something like this:

libA
libB
tests

then you can click on tests and see the other tests.
Instead, right now, I just see:

libA
libB

and the tests are inside those folders

Edit2: add_custom_target -> didn't know this, it looks like what I need

[cristian-adam]

https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTCREATORBUG-28873 has a suggestion for using the FOLDER property on targets.

This would allow customisation of the project tree in regards where targets are located.

In this case the obvious folder for tests would be tests.

A future version of Qt Creator will be having this feature, so make sure to watch that bug report! 😀

[Sandon]

@cristian-adam thank you, I hope there's a workaround though ;)

[Sandon]

I am trying to play with add_custom_target but no real progress so far. I just succeeded in adding external files grouped inside a custom target (using add_custom_target(tests SOURCES myfolder/file.txt) . Does anyone has ever used this function ?

[Sandon]

Still trying wih add_custom_target, but no way to make it work

[Christian Ehrlicher]

I don't see what add_custom_target should have to do with how QtCreator is showing the targets... You have to wait until QtCreator supports the SOURCES property.

[Sandon]

@Christian-Ehrlicher Well, you'll never know. Many times there are tricks to make things work.
I was also thinking to open two projects, one for the libraries and another for the tests, but again, it does not feel like the right approach.

It is really disappointing not to have this simple feature.

[Christian Ehrlicher]

@Sandon said in cmake tests and libs separate view in qt creator:

this simple feature.

Feel free to provide a patch when you are so confident that this is a simple task. QtCreator is open source.

[Sandon]

@Christian-Ehrlicher I wish had more time, but yes.. good reply

[cristian-adam]

CMake already has the SOURCES property, you just need to use cmake generator expressions to use it.

Take this example:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)

project(WidgetsApp VERSION 0.1 LANGUAGES CXX)

add_subdirectory(app)
add_subdirectory(tests)

add_custom_target(MyApp
    SOURCES $<LIST:TRANSFORM,$<LIST:FILTER,$<TARGET_PROPERTY:WidgetsApp,SOURCES>,EXCLUDE,.*_autogen/.*>,PREPEND,app/>
)

[Christian Ehrlicher]

@cristian-adam this looks more like a hack to me... 🙂

[Christian Ehrlicher]

I just saw that I mixed SOURCES And FOLDERS properties - I meant FOLDERS, sorry for the confusion.
https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/prop_tgt/FOLDER.html

[Sandon]

@Christian-Ehrlicher thank you very much! This is quite new to me, so it will take time to understand and rewrite it in a way that works for what I need.. but it could be the "hack/trick" I was looking for.

Edit: after reading it carefully, I am still not sure if this applies to my case. Going to read the documentation. Basically I will need a way to read specific CMakeFiles and associate them to a specific target.

[cristian-adam]

Regarding FOLDER, yes, I'll have to fix https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTCREATORBUG-28873 first.

Currently Qt Creator is abusing FOLDER to make a target runnable. See https://doc.qt.io/qtcreator/creator-run-settings.html#cmake-run-targets

Well, actually, I could keep the qtc_runnable special handling, and have original intent. One wouldn't be able to have both.

[Sandon]

@cristian-adam thank you for your reply.

Do you think is it possible to achieve what I asked with current Qt creator capabilities?

[cristian-adam]

@Sandon said in cmake tests and libs separate view in qt creator:

@cristian-adam thank you for your reply.

Do you think is it possible to achieve what I asked with current Qt creator capabilities?

Nope. I have a fix for https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTCREATORBUG-28873, you can take an artifact from https://github.com/cristianadam/qt-creator/actions/runs/9979288965 and try it out.

After the code review is done, you can have a Qt Creator 15 snapshot from https://download.qt.io/development_releases/qtcreator/ when they are available.

[cristian-adam]

Alternatively you can fork Qt Creator on github, apply the patch from https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt-creator/qt-creator/+/576805 and push a release tag on github.

This will get you a Qt Creator 14 release with the patch in.

[cristian-adam]

Qt Creator is open source, Qt Creator is written in C++, and you don't have to do much in order to get a build on GitHub.