Qt - 'Shadow Building'?

qt build-process desktop-application
xx77aBs picture xx77aBs · Sep 10, 2011 · Viewed 24.1k times · Source

I have a simple question - what is Shadow Building? I've seen it in Qt in Target Setup dialog, but don't know what it does or if I should use it.

It's also present in Projects tab, under General group.

Answer

Mateen Ulhaq picture Mateen Ulhaq · Sep 10, 2011

Shadow building is a technique used to build different Qt builds of the same version for different platforms/compilers/etc. Your compiled build is in a different directory, separate from the original Qt source directory.

I've created a shadow build for my MSVS2010 compiler. If I wanted to, I could create a new build for MinGW in a different build directory.

See the definition here, and more information about configuring your build here.

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