Qmake pre-build step before ANY compilation

[cmannett85]

There are several questions on SO regarding how to create a pre-build step for qmake, I can do that with this in my .pro file:

@versionTarget.target = ../VersionData/versioning.h
versionTarget.depends = FORCE
win32: versionTarget.commands = cd $$PWD; python.exe ./version_getter.py -p $$TARGET
else: versionTarget.commands = cd $$PWD; python ./version_getter.py -p $$TARGET

PRE_TARGETDEPS += ../VersionData/versioning.h
QMAKE_EXTRA_TARGETS += versionTarget@

Now, the problem is that this approach is not a build step per se but just another build target, so if I have the -j flag configured for make it runs my script in parallel with the other build jobs. This is very bad, because my script creates/updates a header file - having it change part way through the compilation is not acceptable.

So, is there anyway I can have this script executed before any compilation is ran? I know I can create another script and call the version_getter.py and qmake in sequence from that, but this is not desirable as I would have to compile from the command line rather than from within Qt Creator.

[pritamghanghas]

can't you make your main target or all depend on versionTarget.

[cmannett85]

Sorry I forgot to update this question, it was answered over at "SO":http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15864689/qmake-pre-build-step-before-any-compilation.

[afya]

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/35411144/automatic-build-version-in-qt](link url)