Building with qmake

Make is a build tool that reads project configuration file called a Makefile and builds executable programs and libraries. qmake is a Qt-provided build tool that simplifies the build process for development projects across multiple platforms. It expands the information in each project file to a Makefile that executes the necessary commands for compiling and linking. It can also be used for non-Qt projects. qmake generates a Makefile based on the information in a project file, and contains supplementary features to support development with Qt, automatically including build rules for moc and uic. qmake can also create projects for Microsoft Visual Studio without requiring the developer to change the project file.

Being a community-driven framework, Qt is really flexible toward developers and gives them the freedom to choose the most suitable tools for their project, without forcing them to use its own build system. Qt supports the following types of build systems...