PRI file version checker

Introduction

Sometimes we have one big project which contains a few or a lot of libraries that used as PRI-files. And there may come a moment when you need to numerate each PRI-file to its version. Ofcourse, often we just write a variable in PRI-file which contain a value with version, for example:

MY_LIB_VERSION = 1.2.0

But what if we use this library in other projects and someone modify it, and this modification broke compatibility with other project? Answer is simple - when we pull changes from repository we just can't build the project, or worse - there will be not so obvious error that surprise you while project running.

And here is the problem - how we can dynamically monitor this stuff?

To answer this question and solve the problem, you can use this simple checker. It works via QMAKE and integrates in PRO file like Replace function through another PRI-file.

System requirements

Qt 5

Installation

Include version_checker.pri into project's PRO-file before any library include:

include(<path_to_lib>/version_checker.pri)

Conditions

Each PRI-file that you want to use with this function must contain a variable named like: <something>_VERSION with one value - your custom version.

How to use?

Version checker has one function: checkVersion(). It accepts two parameters:

1. Path to your library PRI-file;
2. Libraries version number that current project uses.

checkVersion() returns the path to your library PRI-file which means that you can use this function into include() code:

include($$checkVersion(<path_to_lib>/LIB_NAME.pri, 1.0.0))

If it fails - QMAKE will write an error message which version is actual for this library and stop build process.

Exception

If you have a PRI-file library with another PRI-file attached to it, you must number only attached library version, cause, as it often happens, included library is a child of attached library inside it. So the correct using of checker will be:

PARENT_LIB_NAME.pri:

LIB_NAME_VERSION = 1.0.0

CHILD_LIB_NAME.pri:

include(<path_to_lib>/PARENT_LIB_NAME.pri)

Your PRO-file:

$$checkVersion(<path_to_lib>/PARENT_LIB_NAME.pri, 1.0.0)
include(<path_to_lib>/CHILD_LIB_NAME.pri)