I'm having a hell of a time finding documentation which clearly explains how to use a static library in Qt Creator.
I've created and compiled my static library using Qt Creator (New=>Projects\C++ Library=>Set type to "Statically Linked Library"). It compiles and spits out a ".a file".
The problem I encounter is when I try to use the library. I have another project that would like to use it (#include files in the library, etc) but I don't know the proper way to link with the library or include files from the library.
LIBS += -L[path to lib] -l[name of lib]
Note! that filename of lib: lib[nameOfLib].a and you have to pass only original part -l[nameOfLib]
In your project that uses the library make the LIBS variable point to your lib's path.
To include files from the library, add the library folder to the INCLUDEPATH and then do a regular #include in your code files.
e.g:
# the binary's .pro
LIBS += c:/mylibs/math.lib
INCLUDEPATH += c:/mylibs
Edited:
-L tells qmake that the path is a directory that it can search for libraries
-l tells it that the path is a file, but take note of the observation below.
From the qmake docs:
This variable contains a list of
libraries to be linked into the
project. You can use the Unix -l
(library) and -L (library path) flags
and qmake will do the correct thing
with these libraries on Windows
(namely this means passing the full
path of the library to the linker).
The only limitation to this is the
library must exist, for qmake to find
which directory a -l lib lives in.
Note: On Windows, specifying libraries
with the -l option, as in the above
example, will cause the library with
the highest version number to be used;
for example, libmath2.lib could
potentially be used instead of
libmathlib. To avoid this ambiguity,
we recommend that you explicitly
specify the library to be used by
including the .lib file name suffix.
..from QT project creator
- goto projectName.pro from left hand side menu
- type LIBS +=
- rightClick AddLibrary
The variant
LIBS += -L[PATH_TO_LIB_DIR] -l[LIBNAME]
doesn't work if you have both static libLIBNAME.a
and dynamic libLIBNAME.so
libs in the same folder PATH_TO_LIB_DIR
.
In this case on my linux with QMake v 3.0
the dynamic one is linked by default.
To force linkage with static one you need to specify it explicitly without any options.
LIBS += PATH_TO_LIB_DIR/libLIBNAME.a
Is it
LIBS += -L"/some path" -l"somename.a"
or
LIBS += -L/somepath -lsomename.a
or
LIBS += -L/somepath -lsomename"
This should be as easy as it gets but for some reason it is EXTREMELY hard to pull up a search result for because there are so many hits of forums of people asking for help and I've followed every tip I can get but no help...