run a "source" bash shell script in qmake

Question

I want to use the intel compiler for Qt, but using the intel compiler implies running the script

$ source /opt/intel/bin/compilervars.sh intel64

Of course, I could add this to ~/.bashrc, but this would not run it in QtCreator, where it still complains about missing icpc. So I want it to be a part of the main mkspec qmake file.

How can I execute that full bash command in qmake?

Answer 1

Short Answer: Using QMAKE_EXTRA_TARGETS and PRE_TARGET_DEPS, you can execute source /opt/intel/bin/compilersvars.sh intel64, but simply sourcing them will not solve your issue.

Long Answer: The QMake file is converted into a Makefile. Make then executes the Makefile. The problem you will run into is that Make executes each command in its own shell. Thus, simply sourcing the script will only affect one command, the command that executes the script.

There are a couple of possible ways to make things work:

• Execute the script before starting Qt-Creator. I've actually done this for some projects where I needed to have special environment variables setup. To make my life easier, I created a shell command to setup the environment and then launch Qt-Creator.
• Within Qt-Creator, modify the Build Environment for the project I've also used this trick. In your case, simply look at the environment setup by the script and change the "Build Environment" settings under the project tab for your project to match those setup by the script.

It might also be possible to modify QMake's compiler commands, but I am not sure you can make it execute two commands instead of one (source the script then execute the compiler). Further more, this will make the project very un-transportable to other systems.