Qt Creator: copy .exe output into a folder

Question

I am sorry if the question was already asked but after some research I couldn't find an answer. I want to copy the .exe of a project into a folder automatically.

I am using Qt creator 5.0.1 MSCV2010 and it always makes two outputs: release and debug.

For example, I want the /release/project.exe to be in /release/exec/project.exe.

I saw I can copy file like .dll with in a .pro with:

INSTALLS =

But it only work with files which already exist, or the .exe is generated after the compilation. I think I can specify this into:

projects settings->Build compilation->step Make : jom.exe in C:\path\to\project-release

But I don't know what argument is needed, Regards

Answer 1

On Windows you can use DLLDESTDIR variable which specifies where to copy the target dll or exe. Just add this to your .pro :

CONFIG(release, debug|release): DLLDESTDIR +=  $$PWD/../exec

On Linux you can use QMAKE_POST_LINK variable which contains the command to execute after linking the TARGET together. So it is like:

CONFIG(release, debug|release): QMAKE_POST_LINK += $$quote(cp project $$PWD/../exec)

Here project is the name of the target file which you provide by TARGET = project

These will copy the executable binary to a directory named exec one level upper than the program working directory. You can have your arbitrary path.

Answer 2

add a custom build step with the command an parameters

for windows (assuming you are doing this for the release build):

xcopy
Release\<target.exe> path\to\destination\file.exe /Y
%{buildDir}

Answer 3

This should work. I couldn't find any variable that points the target_path. So I defined it:

### to copy target file to build folder
CONFIG(debug, debug|release) {
    TARGET_PATH = $$OUT_PWD/debug
}
CONFIG(release, debug|release) {
    TARGET_PATH = $$OUT_PWD/release
}

win32: QMAKE_POST_LINK += copy /y "$$shell_path($$TARGET_PATH/app_name.exe)" "$$shell_path($$PWD/../build/)"
unix: QMAKE_POST_LINK += cp "$$shell_path($$TARGET_PATH/app_name)" "$$shell_path($$PWD/../build/)"